Tag: Faith

It’s Both/And

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

Our spirituality often gets forced into a binary: it’s completely earthly or it’s totally otherworldly. Either we’re completely consumed with the things and events of this world bearing the burden that it’s our responsibility to fix and mend, or we turn two blind eyes to the fires and tumults burning and occurring around us and stare heavenward convinced that one day God will suddenly make everything right.

I think human beings love binaries because they seem easy to navigate. Isn’t it just easier to live as if all of this is right and all of that is wrong? If everything is determined in its substance to be 100% good or 100% bad, then our choices will be clear, and we’ll (always) know what to choose and when to choose it (or not). The thing is that this line and way of thinking is exhausting because it removes us from having any control over ourselves and the things presenting to us asking for our action. It’s exhausting because we aren’t the ones in control but are being controlled. It’s exhausting because we’re under the subjection of toil, of the “shoulds”, of the “having to prove our righteousness through our works” or the lack thereof.

But human beings don’t work this way and certainly don’t work best this way. We thrive when we ourselves in distinction from our temporal or spiritual allegiances, when we have a bit more alterity regarding our self-expression and self-determination, when we take a moment, catch our breath, and see and hear what’s needed in the moment. Rarely are moments in life demanding my response so crystal clear, black and white, good or bad; often, there are too many factors needing to be considered, most importantly considering any other person in the mix beside myself.

This is why I think Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, is exceptionally helpful here; even if passages such as the one below are used to affirm radical departures from the temporal realm to the spiritual life; that’s not what Paul is advocating for. Rather, the Christian is the epicenter of both the spiritual and temporal realms, working out their spirituality in the temporal realm while bringing the temporal needs of their neighbor into the spiritual realm through prayer. And all of it is about looking to and keeping our eyes fixed on Christ.

Colossians 3:1-11

Paul begins chapter 3 with, Since it is the case that you were raised with Christ, seek the things above where Christ is seated on the right hand of God. Keep setting your mind on the things above, not on the things upon the earth… (vv.1-2). In the previous chapter, Paul mentioned that the Colossians identifed with Christ in his death; now, he balances the equation: if you have died with Christ then you can identify with Christ in Christ’s resurrection. For Paul, the Christian journey by faith and deeds is not only about dying to the old self and to the world and its deeds, but it’s fundamentally about taking hold of—orienting oneself toward—the resurrected life because those who identify with Christ in his death also identify with Christ in his resurrection. The Christian life is not merely a set of do-nots, but a big, robust set of do-pleases![2] Paul expects the Christians he teaches to be those who have one foot in the death of Christ and one in the resurrection of Christ. It is the Christian, for Paul, who operates by and through divine grace: she’s not the one who rejects the world or finds herself consumed by it; rather, she’s the one who is oriented toward Christ[3] and infused with God’s grace[4] that she’s compelled to walk in the steps of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit in the world.[5] What this entails is a new perspective, one that is informed by the things above most of which/whom is Jesus of Nazareth the Christ sitting at the right hand of God.[6] With this new perspective so inspired by the death and resurrection (and ascension) of Christ, it’s the Christian (having died and continually dying to the old self) who is the one who can navigate the treacherous way through the world avoiding all those ideologies of the kingdom of humanity demanding complete devotion and manipulating through fear and anger.[7],[8] Thus why Paul then says, …for you died, and your life has been hidden with Christ in God. Whenever Christ, your life, might appear at that time you, you will be revealed in glory with him (vv.3-4). Their identification with Christ will cause the Colossians to walk differently in the world, but their reward lay not in popularity within the kingdom of humanity (which will probably hate them for moving against the status-quo), but in the glory they’ll receive when they’re revealed as God’s own through Christ and by the Holy Spirit.[9]

Having spiritually and theologically described the way the Colossians now identify with Christ in his death and resurrection while living in the world,[10] Paul spells it out for them. He writes, Therefore, you put to death the members that are of the earth: fornication, impurity, inordinate affection, coveting evil, and covetousness which is idolatry, through these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience (vv.5-6). What Paul wants the Colossians to consider is that they’re now representatives of Christ and in being such, certain actions must be refused.[11] To (intentionally) persist in such activities is to incur the wrath of God, says Paul, which is none other than earning the rewards of such chosen behaviors.[12] (Keep in mind that all of the listed actions to avoid are all actions causing violence against someone else and the self, actions that cause oneself to degrade its dignity of humanity and that of another.[13] ,[14]) These “taboo” actions may have defined and described their lives before their encounter and identification with Christ by faith and God’s gift of grace, but now they are antithetical to the new life of the representative of Christ; the Colossians must, even if it takes a while, work against that old Adam who is such a good swimmer.[15] Thus why Paul writes, In which things you, you also once walked when you were living in that [life]. But now you, you take off all these things: wrath, rage, wickedness, blaspheming, abusive language out of your mouth, not lying to one another; stripping off from oneself the old person with its practices and put on [oneself] the new, the one who is being renovated into knowledge according to the image of the one who created them… (vv.7-10).

What does this new, renovated life walking in the identification with and representation of Christ look like for the Colossians in the positive sense of their being raised with Christ? Unity in distinction. [16] Paul writes, where there cannot be “Greek and Jewish”, “circumcision and uncircumcision”, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but all things and in all things Christ (v.11). For those who are yoked to Christ through faith and by God’s grace, there must be no hierarchies and divisions of human beings that relegate some to dignity and others not.[17] Paul has exhorted the Colossian Christians to live in the world in a new way reflecting the economy and politics of their God who so loved the whole world that God became incarnate in Jesus the Christ the one who is the power of all powers and in whom all things of the earth find their life.[18] It’s this incarnated experience that the Colossian Christians are to emulate in their new life[19] oriented toward Christ[20] and empowered by the Holy Spirit. These are to be in the world as Christ was and now is through their witness.[21]

Conclusion

We, like the Colossians, must be reminded that our faith and deeds as Christians in the world are beautiful and messy mixes of the spiritual and temporal; we, like the Colossians, have one foot in the spiritual realm and one in the temporal realm. Where we pray doesn’t mean we won’t act; it just means that our prayers shape and form our actions in the world, in that moment, toward that need. Where we act doesn’t mean we don’t pray, but that we must so that we keep Christ as our goal. Where the world is burning doesn’t mean we should let it because we know that Christ is in control and will one day redeem the whole kit and kaboodle. Rather, knowing that Christ is all in all, we should be that much more motivated to take up our part in the healing and nurturing of our world and the lives of our neighbors.

Do you know what the neatest thing about our faith in Christ is? It’s that it’s eager to work itself out in loving deeds toward the world and for the well-being of our neighbors to the glory of God. Why is this? Because our faith is in the incarnate Word of God, God’s own Son who came as God to be in the world in human flesh to bring God and humanity and the world closer together. Therefore, we get to participate in this mission of God and bring the spiritual realm into the temporal realm by our actions in the world while bringing the temporal realm into the spiritual through our actions by faith in worship and prayer. It is not either/or; it is both/and.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[2] James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text, TNIGTC, eds., I. Howard Marshall, W. Ward Gasque, Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 203. “The event of death-and-resurrection was two-sided for Christ himself (2:15); a message of the cross without the resurrection would not be gospel, and a call to embrace the implications of the cross without a call also to embrace the implications of the resurrection would be poor teaching. So here: it was not enough to remind the Colossian recipients of the lifestyle and religious praxis that they no longer do or need follow out; that would have been too much like the ‘Do not’s characteristic of the Colossian Jews’ praxis (2:21). The message of the resurrection has equally positive corollaries for the believer’s daily life, which have to be spelled out to provide a sufficient counterweight to the evident attractiveness of the more traditional Jeish lifestyle…”

[3] Dunn, Colossians, 205. “The consequences for the Christian perspective are thus also clear. If Jesus, the Christ, is so highly favored and acknowledged to be God’s ‘right hand man,’ with all the power and authority to effect God’s will and to protect his own which is implicit in that claim, then Christian life should be entirely oriented by reference to this Christ.”

[4] Dunn, Colossians, 203. 3.1 Change of perspective, “It is the sort of change which follows form complete identification with another person or cause, when the service of that person or cause becomes all-consuming the basic determiner of all priorities, the bubbling spring of a motivation, resolution, and application which perseveres despite even repeated setbacks….What the Pauline gospel offered and emphasized by means of its passive formulations was the promise that the change was not self-contrived but rather enabled and brought about by divine grace, the same divine grace which had raised Jesus form the dead…”

[5] Dunn, Colossians, 205. What is commended here is “…a cast of mind, a settled way of looking at things, a sustained devotion to and enactment of a life cause.”

[6] Dunn, Colossians, 203. “The key factor in this new perspective is the fact that Christ has been raised and exalted…to sit on God’s right in heaven.”

[7] Dunn, Colossians, 206. “They key, once again then, is recognition of the crucial turn of events and transformation of perception of reality effected by Christ’s death and resurrection; it is this Christ-perspective which should mark out the Colossian Christians’ heavenly spirituality and enable them to see through the alternative spirituality of the Colossian philosophy.”

[8] Dunn, Colossians, 206. “The aorist is simply a powerful metaphor for the fact that when they believed in Christ in baptism they were putting their previous way of life to death and having it buried out of sight. Consequently, it should no longer be a factor in their new way of life. They have been freed by that one act to live a quite different kind of life, determined not by their old fears and loyalties but by their new and primary loyalty to Christ and by the enabling which comes from on high…”

[9] Dunn, Colossians, 208. “Despite the present hiddenness of their ‘life,’ which might make their attitudes and actions in their present living somewhat bewildering to onlookers, they could nevertheless be confident that Christ, the focus of their life, would demonstrate to all the rightness of the choice they had made in baptism”

[10] Dunn, Colossians, 207. It’s a real, tangible life, and not a spiritually conceived life disconnected from earth.

[11] Dunn, Colossians, 212. “…the person’s interaction with the wider world as through organs and limbs is what is in view. It was precisely the interaction which had characterized the Colossians’ old way of life which now targeted…”

[12] Dunn, Colossians, 216. “…the wrath take the form of God giving or allowing his human creatures what they want, leaving them to their own devise—the continuing avarice and abuse of sexual relations being its own reward.”

[13] McKnight, Colossians, 293. “…flesh mindedness leads to flesh living, while Spirit mindedness leads to spirit-drenched living…This second group becomes Spiritually wise in their relations of humility and love and harmony…the opposite is the way of discord, violence, and fractures relationships…”

[14] McKnight, Colossians, 304. “If the Roman world’s sexuality as shaped by themes of dominance, status, and indulgence (in all directions), for Paul it was shaped by holiness, love, and fidelity.”

[15] Dunn, Colossians, 213. “Paul and Timoty clearly did not harbor any illusions regarding tie converts. They did not attempt to promote a Christian perspective which was unrelated to the hard realities of daily life. On the contrary, they were all too aware of the pressures which shaped people like the Colossian Christians and which still held a seductive attraction for them. They were concerned that the Colossian believers’ death with Christ, the atrophy of old habits of evil, had not yet worked through the full extent of their bodily relationships.”

[16] Dunn, Colossians, 223. “…it is not so much that the individual categories ‘Greek,’ ‘Jew,’ ‘circumcision,’ and ‘uncircumcision’ are discounted as no longer meaningful; rather it is the way of categorizing humankind into two classes, ‘Greek and Jew,’ ‘circumcision an uncircumcision,’ is no longer appropriate. In contrast, the last to items (‘slave, free’) do not cover the complete range of human status, so we do not have ‘slave and free,’ breaking a parallelism which is a feature of the other two versions.”

[17] Dunn, Colossians, 227. “The point here, then, is once again that Christ has relativized all such distinctions, however fundamental to society, its structure, and its ongoing existence.”

[18] McKnight, Colossians, 299. “This section articulates what the gospel does to the moral life of a believer; participation in the death with Christ slays the flesh and sins that destroy and divide; in fact, it brings the Gentiles—all people (3:11)—into the one family of God alongside Isreal so that Christ ’is all and is in all.’”

[19] Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians, TNICNT, ed. Joel B Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 290. “Far from a summons to an un- or other worldliness, these exhortation calls the Colossians to live in the world on the basis of the rule of Christ over all the powers.”

[20] McKnight, Colossians, 29292-293. “To back up now: on the basis of their co-resurrection with Christ, the Colossians are to seek to participate in new-creation life by directing their faith and lordship toward the Christ, who rules all of creation. That rule is not yet visible to all but someday will be…To seek the thing above, then, means to live a life on earth under the resurrected King Jesus as the Lord of all creation, with the implication that Caesar is not their true lord.”

[21] McKnight, Colossians, 291. “…by ‘things above,’ Paul means a way of living constituted not by the stoicheia and skia but by the rule of Christ above, whose rule will become a reality on earth in the future.”

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Return again to Hope and Joy

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

For the past few months, an over-arching feeling has pervaded human life: existential fatigue. It doesn’t matter what you believe and theologically hold to or what you don’t; it doesn’t matter what political or philosophical ideology you are aligned with or not; not even your ethical posture in the world can protect you from the pervasive feeling of existential fatigue. We’re exhausted, from head to toe, in every fiber of our being, we are flat-out, 100% exhausted.

I don’t really have a clear and singular answer as to what is causing our existential fatigue, but I have a feeling it has to do with the ever-present fear and anger. It’s exhausting to hate people. It’s exhausting feeling like you are always under threat. It’s exhausting thinking people are out to get you. It’s exhausting to live distrustful, as if everyone is looking to steal something (material and immaterial) from you. It’s exhausting to be shut down, refusing to see the humanity in those whom our local and preferred media sources classify as *the* problem. It’s exhausting because it’s so easy to be led about by the ear and that’s why we’re so exhausted; we’re being pulled every which way, and we’ve forgotten there’s solid ground under our feet and that we have a voice to say ENOUGH.

We’ve lost our hope and joy; we’re practically strangers with curiosity. We’ve sold these down the river because either they feel extravagant right now because everything is on fire or because we’re chasing the carrot of some future oriented hope where our joy rests on the other side of eliminating the problem/s. Rather than expanding our understanding, we’re retracting; rather than asking questions and wondering, we’re curving and curling in like every full stop we use to end our statements.

But hope and joy are fundamental to our Christian walk and journey and only if they are anchored in Christ and not in things of this world (both false promises and false enemies). This is why Paul writes to the church in Colossae, to keep them focused on what is important—the Gospel—because it’s only in the proclamation of Christ—crucified and raised—where they find the source of their hope and joy, where they can dare to become (yet again) curious.

Colossians 1:1-14

Paul begins with the standard greeting[2] letting the church in Colossae know who he is and who is helping to write this letter, Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and brother Timothy to the holy and faithful siblings in Christ in Colossae; grace and peace to you from God our father (vv1-2). While Paul didn’t really know the Christians in Colossae, they would’ve been familiar with him[3],[4] and would’ve felt the weight of his authority (his apostolic calling by Christ) behind the lines.[5],[6],[7] (Paul’s authority isn’t in title but is from God by God’s gift of grace in the calling.) Timothy is known to Paul[8] (bff[9]) but not (necessarily) known to the Colossians, thus, we can assume that Timothy had a hand in writing this letter[10] and that’s why he shows up in the greeting.[11] We can also assume that Paul (and Timothy) were eager to include—via writing—the Colossian Christians into their spiritual[12] family of faith by calling them both the holy and faithful ones, siblings.[13] Of more importance for Paul was the goal of using this address to “realign” the Colossians away from the lures and false premises and promises of the kingdom of humanity[14] and back toward God; in other words, remember whose you are, say Paul and Timothy.

Then Paul (and Timothy) write, We are thankful to God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ when we are lovingly praying concerning you, after hearing of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have toward all the holy ones thru the hope that is stored up/held in reserve for you in the heavens… (vv3-6a). Immediately, Paul and Timothy lay out the coming themes of the letter: faith, hope, love[15],[16] and thankfulness,[17] all of which are dependent on the good news which the Colossians heard in the word of truth and that which is present to/in them. In fact, for Paul, hope and the gospel go hand in hand. [18] Hope for Paul, and thus for the Colossians, is about “confidence in God” not in some optimistic outcome.[19] It’s about that which is being held in reserve for the holy, faithful ones by God in heaven rather than saccharine and toxic positivity here on earth.[20] In other words, it’s not about material gain here in the kingdom of humanity (no matter how grand the gain might be); [21] it’s about walking in humility with Christ and with their neighbor (in intentional presence of support and advocacy[22]), growing[23] in character[24],[25] and loving as best they can, as Paul then writes, just as also in all the cosmos it is bearing fruit and growing just as also [in] you, from that day you heard and you recognized the grace of God in truth (v6b).

Paul then credits Epaphras with being the means by whom the Colossians have heard this gospel and (rhetorically) exhorts the Colossians to listen to him,[26] Just as you heard from Epaphras, our beloved, fellow servant, who is faithful on behalf of us, servant of Christ, the one who declared to us your love in the Spirit (vv7-8). Who is Epaphras? A Colossian native and who, considering Colossae’s closeness to Ephesus, (probably) meet Paul in Ephesus.[27] He is the one who let Paul know that there was a burgeoning threat among the Christian Colossians.[28] Paul’s description of Epaphras echoes the themes of love and faith where love is the fruit of the gospel much like hope is its thrust.[29] Here, Paul and Timothy emphasize for this Christian community that their faith in the gospel is the source and foundation of their life in Christ and not dependent on ascribing to renegade philosophies and ideologies and mysticisms of the kingdom of humanity.[30]

It’s on this account Paul returns to the talking about praying for the Colossian Christians, For this reason also, from the day which you heard, we, we do not cease praying and requesting concerning you that you might be made complete in the recognition of the will of [God] in all wisdom and spiritual insight, to live a life worthy of the Lord toward all pleasingness in all work by bearing good fruit and increasing to the recognition of God, in all strength, being made strong according to the strength of the glory of [God] in all constancy and long suffering with grace, being thankful to the Father for the one who makes us sufficient [to be grafted in] of the inheritance of the holy ones in the light (vv9-12). Paul begins by praying for the Colossians to know God’s will that’s not only at work in the cosmos but also in their (individual and corporate) lives.[31] This knowledge is founded in the knowledge of Christ Jesus, savior, died and raised, and the power of the Spirit; it’s their encounter with Christ where the Colossians will grasp the will of God[32] in all wisdom and spiritual insight,[33] and thus come into their own identity formed by what Christ says and not what the world says.[34] In other words, the recognition of the will of God is through being grafted into the vine of God through/by which divine wisdom and insight come spiritually. [35] This is not worldly wisdom; this is the wisdom and insight of the reign of God, and it promises to be in conflict and resist the wisdom and insight of the kingdom of humanity. What will be the fruit of this wisdom and insight from the reign of God? It will create Christians who walk worthily of name, those who bear good fruit and grow in knowing God (thus knowing the neighbor), those who are made strong and resilient, those who respond with constancy and long-suffering in the midst of chaos and tumult, and those who are thankful for Christ and the Spirit. Paul prays that the Colossian Christians become those who can reject the lies and falsehoods, the strawmen and red herrings of the kingdom of humanity, those who can resist the lures and dangling carrots and become the ones who can call out such things for what they are: harbingers of death, division and derision, and existential fatigue.[36]

How does Paul dare to believe such imagery? Because of vv. 13-14, [Christ][37] who ransomed us out from the domination of darkness and exchanged [us] into the reign of the son of the love of [God], in whom we have release/liberation, the pardon of sins. It is not by supra/super-human ability by which the Colossians will resist the lies and falsehoods coming at them and luring them, it’s by their faith in Christ which is the source of both their hope and love: hope that carries them through and love that anchors them on the solid ground of the activity of the divine reign inaugurated in Christ and confirmed by the Holy Spirit.[38] Paul prays for them to become those who know and do.[39]

Conclusion

It’s easy to get wrapped up in all that’s swirling around us. It’s easy to be lured toward simple solutions and easy enemies; it’s the path of least resistance to persecute other people for our problems while refusing to look in the mirror and acknowledge the ways we’ve participated in making these problems our problems to begin with. Being angry is way easier than being patient; blaming is easier than being curious; being indifferent is significantly easier than loving.

And as much as I personally understand how easy this is for human beings who are often dehydrated and burdened with a brain that is better suited for hunter-gatherer epochs, I also know that as Christians we are not off the hook here no matter how easy these things are. We could let this letter to the Colossians be a letter to us; we are being exhorted to remember whose we are and where we live (Christ). We are being reminded that the one in us (the Holy Spirit) is stronger and more capable than any spirit of the age promising quick solutions and quicker comforts. We are being asked to turn our gaze away from our phones, tvs, and loud and emotional pundits more eager for ratings than truth, and look to the one who is the source of love, of grace, of hope. We need to remember that our faith, while not magical nor a solution to the world’s problems, is the firm foundation where we stand and from where we begin to build the solutions ones that value love and not indifference, liberation and not captivity, life and not death.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[2] Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians, TNICNT, ed. Joel B Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 76-77. “Paul’s letters were longer than ordinary letters of the ancient world. In addition, Paul’s letters have predictable sections, including salutation or greeting, a thanksgiving, and the main body. We ought to remind ourselves that ‘grace and peace’ in Paul’s salutations are, after all, the apostle’s way of saying ‘hello’ or ‘greetings.’”

[3] James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text, TNIGTC, eds., I. Howard Marshall, W. Ward Gasque, Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 43-44. “At all events, the Colossian recipients of the letter would have no doubt that the Paul named at the head of the letter as the famous/infamous missionary who had brought the message of a Jewish Messian/Christ so effectively to Gentiles.”

[4] McKnight, Colossians, 77. “Paul did not dictate his letters to his secretary, and he probably did not write them out in one sitting. Timothy, in other words, contributed to this letter in content, which is why his name follows and the ‘and.’”

[5] Dunn, Colossians, 44. Whether he wrote it or signed off on it, “…the authority of the apostle lay behind the letter, and that would be sufficient to ensure that the letter was treasured by the Colossians and/or other of the other churches to which the letter was circulated…subsequently to be included in the earliest collection(s) of Pual’s letters.”

[6] Dunn, Colossians, 44. Paul’s claim to apostleship, “…the claim is that his commission and authorization came directly from Christ Jesus. It is as a representative of and spokesman for Christ Jesus, therefore, that Paul would lay claim to a hearing —not simply as spokesman for some agreed tradition or some church council. And for Paul that meant a commission and authorization equal in weight to that of the earliest and most prominent Christian leadership…In other words, the added phrase is not merely a matter of providing fuller identification, as though the name ‘Paul’ was insufficient. It is also and still more a claim to authority and respect.”

[7] McKnight, Colossians, 79. Paul’s use of “apostle” here: “Paul combines the original sense of the twelve apostles…along with the third sense with a prophetic-calling dimension because Paul has been commissioned by Jesus and is a church-planting Gentile missionary. To be called an apostle in tis sense requires that one was an eyewitness of Jesus…that one had a commission from the Lord to represent and speak for him, and that one had performed miracles. Apostles are ranked at the top of the spiritual gifts by Paul…Most important, Paul’s apostleship is described as grace, a gift from God, a theme developed in Col 1:25-27.”

[8] Dunn, Colossians, 47. “Timothy features more frequently in Paul’s letters than any of Paul’s other associates and is given special prominence in several of the greetings…He also served as Paul’s emissary in several delicate negotiations…”

[9] McKnight, Colossians, 81. “Timothy is Paul’s best friend, closest co-worker and associate, and a man about whom we know plenty, even if he is always in the background. Thus, Timothy’s father was a Gentile but his mother a Jew; he was probably converted to following Christ during Pual’ first missionary journey to Lystra, where Timothy surely saw Paul being stoned. Timothy’s mother was a believer…”

[10] McKnight, Colossians, 77. “The letter to the Colossians was written by both Paul and Timothy, which raises the important topic of how letters were written.”

[11] Dunn, Colossians, 47. Timothy is not considered to be essential to the Colossian community, Thus his mention, “…could reinforce the possibility that in this case, of the two authors named, Timothy had in fact greater responsibility for composing the letter than Paul had, with Pual approving the content, adding his persona signature, and named first out of resect…”

[12] Dunn, Colossians, 49. “Their brotherhood was not one of blood relationship, but rather the spiritual bond of the shared experience of believing in Christ Jesus and knowing that they were accepted by and through him.”

[13] Dunn, Colossians, 49. Brothers/faithful “They wished to stress that these Christians, unknow to them personally, were nevertheless brothers just as much as Timothy himself was…It was precisely the Colossians’ continued commitment as brothers, members of the new family gathered around Christ Jesus, that the writers wanted to encourage and sustain…”

[14] Dunn, Colossians, 50. “The crucial feature of the phrase, however, is, as already indicated, that it enabled Paul to realign the identity of the people of God away from questions of ethnic descent and national custom to integration with this Jesus, who, even as Israel’s Messiah, transcended such definitions and concerns…”

[15] Dunn, Colossians, 57. “What Paul and timothy commend here, therefore, is the way in which the Colossians receive the message about Christ …. And committed themselves in trust to the one so proclaimed, making Christ the focus and determinant of their lives form then on…”

[16] McKnight, Colossians, 91-92. “What they heard about was earliest Christianity’s famous triad of faith, love, and hope, beginning here with salvation history’s focal shift…with ‘faith’ in Christ Jesus.”

[17] Dunn, Colossians, 55. “…the themes and language of the thanksgiving are echoed in the rest of the letter…”

[18] Dunn, Colossians, 60. “That the gospel is summed up here in terms of ‘hope’ ….is a reminder of how closely its original eschatological force still clung to the word.”

[19] Dunn, Colossians, 58. Hope here in NT/Colossians/Paul “…the sense here is characteristically Jewish: hope as expectation of good, confidence in God…As such it is closely related to faith, confident trust in God.”

[20] Dunn, Colossians, 61. “…the claim being made is that the good news of Christ Jesus unveils the reality of human destiny in the sure hope that it holds forth…”

[21] Dunn, Colossians, 61. “The implication maybe that the Colossians should hesitate before making too much of the success of their own evangelism, and this prepares for the warning notes that become prominent from 2:8.”

[22] McKnight, Colossians, 93-94. “Since Paul specifies the object of their love—‘for all god’s people’—we see here an expression of ecclesial-shaped commitment to one another in presence, advocacy, and participation in Christoformity. He does not have in mind a general humanitarian benevolence but instead…a devoted commitment to presence, advocacy, protection, provision, and mutual sanctification with other followers of Jesus.”

[23] McKnight, Colossians, 99-100. “Paul’s point concerns the catholicity of the gospel: what the gospel is doing among others in the empire (here ‘throughout the whole world’), it is doing also among them. And what it is doing is ‘bearing fruit’ and ‘growing,’ to actions that describe how God is at work in the world through the church.”

[24] Dunn, Colossians, 62. “…the closeness of the two verses favors the idea of growth in character, but both ideas may be implied—the success of the gospel in producing so many mature and moral people.”

[25] Dunn, Colossians, 62-63. “Either way the verb denotes the experience…as well as the intellectual apprehension of God’s outreaching generosity…as transforming power…”

[26] McKnight, Colossians, 104. “Paul’s words about Epaphras are far less idealistic than they are rhetorical; by labeling him with these terms, Paul presses his case that the Colossians are to listen to Epaphras as an unauthorized minister of the gospel. From a different angle, these terms describe the ideal minister of the gospel.”

[27] Dunn, Colossians, 63. Epaphra “As a native of Colossae…he presumably first encountered Paul and was converted through his preaching during Paul’s long stay in Ephesus…, some 120 miles distant on the coast and directly accessible by road down the Lycus and Meander valleys…”

[28] Dunn, Colossians, 65. “Presumably it was to Epaphras…that Paul owed knowledge of the threatening circumstances at Colossae, to which the main thrust of the letter is directed…”

[29] Dunn, Colossians, 65. “As hope is the main thrust of the gospel (1:5), so love …is its main fruit…It is described more fully as ‘love in (or by) the Spirit’…”

[30] Dunn, Colossians, 68-69. Of the second half of ch. 1: “…very Jewish character of the language…This emphasis on…the Jewish character of the gospel to which the Colossian Christians were committed is unlikely to be accidental. It suggests that Paul an Timothy thought it desirable to emphasize just this fundamental feature of their common faith. The most obvious reason is that the Colossians were confronted by local Jews who were confident of the superiority of their own religious practice and who denigrated the claims of these Gentiles to share in their own Jewish heritage…”

[31] Dunn, Colossians, 69. v.9 “For a theist who believes that God’s active purpose determines the ordering of the world, lies behind events on earth, and shapes their consequences, one of the most desirable objectives must be to know God’s will. The corollary, spelled out in the following phrases, is that such knowledge gives insight into and therefore reassurance regarding what happens (often unexpected in human perspective) and helps direct human conduct to accord with that will. Such desire to know and do God’s will is naturally very Jewish in character…”

[32] Dunn, Colossians, 69-70. Knowledge used to come thru the law “But for Paul in particular there was now a better and surer way of knowing God’s will and of discerning what really mattered: by the personal transformation that flowed from inward renewal…”

[33] Dunn, Colossians, 70-71. “Here, too, the wisdom in particular is understood as given through the law…but it is equally recognized that such wisdom can come only form above….And particularly to be noted is the recognition that wisdom and understanding come only from the Spirit….”

[34] McKnight, Colossians, 109. “Paul’s prayer is for a kind of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding that will lead them into Christ. If the apocalyptic mystics were elitists, the Pauline vision for the church counters each: the truth of the gospel is not esoteric and for elitists, it is based on a relationship with God in Christ and not on passwords, it is for all…and it is all summed in Christ as the truth…”

[35] Dunn, Colossians, 73. v.11 “The sentence runs on with continued emphasis that such fruitful living is wholly dependent on divine enabling. The power of God is a familiar Pauline theme…and prominent in Ephesians…It is also deeply rooted in Jewish thought…”

[36] Dunn, Colossians, 78. “…darkness can be legitimately and authoritatively resisted, as having had its license revoked…Within a unitary kingdom…subjects of the king can reject al other claims to final authority over them….”

[37] Dunn, Colossians, 82. “The one step clearly taken beyond Jewish thinking on forgiveness is the location of forgiveness no longer in the cult, or even simply in directness of prayer to God, but once gain ‘in Christ.’ As particularly in Galatians, it is the possibility of Gentiles being ‘in Christ’ that brings them within the sphere of God’s gracious forgiveness. ‘In Christ’ is the key to all.”

[38] McKnight, Colossians, 113. “The wisdom is Christocentric…and mediated through the Holy Spirit.”

[39] McKnight, Colossians, 114-115. “…sound thinking is to lead to sound living, and while this theory is often claimed, the connection between thought and behavior is not automatic. Many who know do not do, and many who do do not know.”

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Faith’s Descent into Truth

Psalm 8:1,4-5a. Abba God our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world! When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what is humanity that you should be mindful of them?

Introduction

Human beings love things that are familiar and known, predictable. At the root of this love is our nervous systems: they crave comfort and nothing brings it more comfort than what is known and familiar, safe. Knowing (roughly) what the day will bring, allows us to breathe that sigh of relief even if that daily routine is a bit banal. Getting up, coffee, eating breakfast, getting ready, going to work, coming home, making dinner, watching TV, and then going to bed with a good book, is comforting even if it’s also the reason for midlife crises.

Humans love the familiar, the predictable, the known, so much that we will persist in doing things that hinder our thriving, surviving, and living; and we’ll vehemently reject anything new that threatens our security. There’s a quote about this, “The nervous system prefers a familiar hell to an unknown heaven.” We love the familiar so much, we’ll risk relationships to maintain it, we’ll stake our livelihood on it; we’d even choose death to keep safe.

There’s a problem for Christians here. We don’t worship a God who’s “safe,” “easy to figure out”, and completely “knowable and known.” We don’t worship a God who is static and still (characteristics of death); we worship a God who is dynamic and, on the move—a God who is living! In Genesis 1, we encounter God who is actively pulling things apart to reveal God’s dynamic, life-giving, liberating love: the heavens from themselves, the waters from themselves, the land from the waters, and human beings from one to two. In the gospels we see God willing to become human so God can identify with the human plight, to live and die as one of us and then render death to its own death in Jesus. And in Pentecost, we see God, set out to pursue every last beloved in the coming and sealing divine Holy Spirit. To quote Mr. Beaver from CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, “‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver. ‘Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.’”

So, to follow this God through faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit is to go into the unknown, the “unsafe,” the unfamiliar; it is to be sent forward, the path backward forever sealed off. As John records in his gospel,

John 16:12-15

I still have man things to say to you, said Jesus to his disciples, but you all are not able to endure/to carry [them] right now. But as soon as the Spirit of Truth comes, [the Spirit of Truth] will guide/teach you all into all truth… (vv 12-13b). Our gospel passage is part of the “Farewell Discourses” in the gospel of John. Chapter 16 participates in two different aspects of these “Farewell Discourses”: 1. The disciples’ future in relation to the world; and 2. The disciples’ future in relation to God.[1] Our portion of scripture is in the later of the two aspects mentioned: the disciples’ future in the relation to the world. Jesus is, in 16:12-15, preparing his disciples for the future in respect/relation to God.[2] Jesus tells his disciples know that he is not telling them everything; there is more truth to endure and carry. The knee jerk reaction is to think that Jesus is not disclosing all the pain and suffering these disciples of his will have; that’s not it. He’s already addressed what they will face as they proceed into the world with out him. Here he’s talking about the divine self-disclosure of the truth of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The disciples are not ready to hear what this truth of God is that Jesus knows and the Holy Spirit will proclaim to them. It’s not a psychological unreadiness; it’s an earthly unreadiness; because of where they are, who they are, when they are, how they are, these disciples are not ready to endure any more of the truth than that which they have at that moment.[3] The dynamic truth—the gospel of love, life, and liberation—must not be given before they are ready, otherwise it will fall flat or it will flatten those too weak to bear it. In other words, the disciples need to grow (more!) and as they do grow, by the presence of the Spirit and by faith in Christ, the same Spirit will be the vehicle of more divine self-disclosure.[4]

John’s Jesus continues, for [the Spirit of Truth] will not speak from themself, but [the Spirit of Truth] will speak what they will hear, and that which comes [the Spirit of Truth] will announce/bring back to you (v. 13c-e). Jesus puts some qualifiers on this further divine disclosure the disciples are being prepared for. Whatever truth is to be revealed by the Spirit of Truth will not diverge from God’s mission in the world or depart from the essence of Jesus Christ’s witness to God and his participation in the divine mission. There is something to encounter in the darkness of the future sitting just outside of the material bodies of the disciples, something they cannot prepare for now physically, but can mature toward by faith (trust in God). It is the Spirit of Truth who will illuminate the truth cloaked in the darkness of the future once the disciples are there, and it will also be the voice that summons the disciples into that darkness.[5] Faith will step into the darkness knowing the warm, comforting voice of God, trusting that divine voice, and following the call into more divine disclosure.[6]

And, according to John, That one [the Spirit of Truth] will render me glorious, because [the Spirit of Truth] will receive from me and will announce/bring back word to you all. All things whatever the father has, it is mine; on account of this I spoke that what [the Spirit of Truth] receives from me they will bring back word/announce to you (v 14-15). Whatever truth there is to be revealed in the future, it’s source will be God the Creator and God the Reconciler and announced by God the Sustainer. (Here’s why this is our gospel for Trinity Sunday!). The Spirit of Truth is not going to deliver some brand-new revelation or reveal some new mystery that contradicts God’s self-disclosure in Christ.[7] Concurrently, this truth that is to come that they cannot bear now will not be fabricated by the kingdom of humanity; it will be of and from and conform to the core and essence of the reign of God.[8] The Spirit of Truth will make God’s self-disclosure in Christ real for all those who are to believe; the Spirit of Truth will reveal God’s truth to the community of disciples, and this truth will adhere to the essence of the divine mission of love, life, and liberation in the world…wherever and whenever they are.[9] It will not be an old word, or a word that has ceased to illuminate the future or will it be a summons backward. The word of truth that the Spirit of Truth will hear and bring back to the disciples will be lamp unto their feet, a map forward, a guide through unchartered territory, it will be an otherworldly voice summoning them forward into the new.[10] And this word of truth will be at the center of the community’s proclamation and praxis: the community, ushered into this divine truth will bring Jesus, thus God,[11] close to the oppressed and disenfranchised, those who are forced to live at the boarders and in the badlands of society, hidden away, fearing for their lives, just as Christ did all those many years before them.[12]

Conclusion

While there is a historical and concrete audience for John’s gospel, there is, also, not one. This is my favorite thing about the John’s Gospel: as soon as we take up the text, Jesus’s prayers for and exhortations to the disciples become ours. Thus, as the disciples were summoned into the darkness of the future to behold what the Spirit of Truth will receive and bring back to them, so, too, are we. By the power, love, strength of our Triune God, we are summoned into that which we cannot predict, do not know, and cannot understand (at first). It is our faith in Christ, our union with God, and our empowerment by the Holy Spirit that will be our firm foundation as we proceed into that darkness of the future, it will be our comfort, it will be our warmth, it will be our light. We need not fear what comes, because Jesus has told us that by the Spirit of Truth God and Jesus himself will be there to receive us.

We love going backwards because going backwards is safe, and known, and predictable. We love our routines because they, too, are safe, known, and predictable. We like things to stay the same no matter how much that fixed state means our death. But, as mentioned in the beginning, we worship a Triune God of life—manifold, rich, robust, incredible, indelible, irreplaceable life. And in worshiping this God we get no choice but to embrace the darkness of the unknown, the unsafe, and the unpredictable and fall into the warm lap of Abba God, embraced by our brother Jesus, and enfolded in the heavy blanket of the Holy Spirit.

So today, hear the summons to go forward—as scared as you may be, as angry as you may be, as stubborn as you probably are—and embrace the divine truth being disclosed to you and that participates in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world on behalf of all God’s beloved.

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), TOC. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966).

[2] Bultmann, John, 573. “The discourse starts again and the first words show that the subject is not, as it was before, the content of the future—the task and destiny of the disciples—but the future as such. The intention behind the prophecy of the continuance of the revelation, contained in vv. 13-15, is to bring about a state of readiness for the future, and v. 12 prepares the way for this.”

[3] Bultmann, John, 573. “Jesus still has much to say, but the disciples are not yet able to bear it. The words should not be understood psychologically; rather they indicate the essential nature of the case. Readiness for the future is not only demanded by that particular hour, but it describes the very existence of the disciple. The believer has not been taken away from the world…he has a future in it, and must withstand whatever it brings and demands.”

[4] Bultmann, John, 573. “What [the believer] has to go through, however, cannot be anticipated in words, which he could not even put together; the believer can only measure the significance and claims of what he has to undergo when he actually meets it. He anticipates the future in faith, not in foreknowledge. And thus the apparent contradiction between v. 12 and 15.15 is comprehensible: Jesus cannot state all that the future will bring, and yet he has said it all, everything, that is, that makes the believer free and ready for it.”

[5] Bultmann, John, 574. “If the Spirit is at work in the word that is proclaimed in the community, then this word gives faith the power to step out into the darkness of the future, because the future is always illumined afresh by the word.”

[6] Bultmann, John, 574. “Faith will see the ‘truth’ in each case, i.e., it will always be certain of the God who is manifest in the word, precisely because it understands the present in the light of this word. The promise is no different from that in 8.31f.”

[7] Bultmann, John, 575. “It is irrelevant from whom the Spirit hears the word, whether from Jesus or from God; for as v. 15a reminds us, they are one and the same. This means that the Spirit’s word is not something new, to be contrasted with what Jesus said, but that the Spirit only states the latter afresh.”

[8] Bultmann, John, 575. “The statement affirms that the word that is at work in the community really is the word of revelation and not human discourse; i.e. it is like the word that Jesus spoke, which did not come from himself.” And, “The Spirit will not bring new illumination, or disclose new mysteries; on the contrary, in the proclamation effected by him, the word that Jesus spoke continues to be efficacious.”

[9] Bultmann, John, 575. “Rather the meaning of this: the future will not be unveiled in a knowledge imparted before it happens, but it will be illuminated again and again by the word that is at work in the community.”

[10] Bultmann, John, 576. “The word of Jesus is not a collection of doctrines that is in need of supplementation, nor is it a developing principle that will only be unfolded in the history of ideas; as the Spirit’s proclamation it always remains the word spoken into the world from beyond.”

[11] Bultmann, John, 576. “…that the Spirit continues the proclamation of the word of Jesus means that it is the word of God, i.e. revelation.”

[12] Bultmann, John, 576. v. 14 “This is an express statement that the Spirit’s word does not displace or surpass the word of Jesus, as if it were something new. Rather it is the word of Jesus that will be alive in the community’s proclamation; the Spirit will ‘call it to mind’ (14.26). and herein is to be found the completion of Jesus’ glorification.”

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Water and Fire

Psalm 29:1-2, 11 Ascribe to Abba God, you gods, ascribe to Abba God glory and strength. Ascribe to God the glory due God’s Name; worship Abba God in the beauty of holiness. God shall give strength to God’s people; God shall give God’s people the blessing of peace.

Introduction

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had moments in my life where I have felt the heavy blankets of shame, disgrace, and regret. The dastardly thing about these emotions and feelings is that they never tend to stay on the surface, pinned to the exterior of the epidermis. They sink in deep, infecting the heart, mind, soul, the very being of a person. There isn’t enough soap and water hot enough to get at the dirt. There are times when I want to crawl into the shower and stay there, under the hot streams, until I feel clean, hoping beyond hope that the water cascading down, pouring over me would–somehow—penetrate through my flesh and cleanse my heart and mind, my soul and self, washing away these children of malfeasance. In the end, though, it’s just water, it can’t and won’t do the very thing I needed it to do. These are times I need something more than just water, I need divine fire. Under that falling water, I need to remember my confession: please forgive me Lord, a sinner. But I can’t stop there, I must press through that confession and remember this: In the name of Christ, I am Baptized. With Martin Luther, it’s here, in remembering my baptism where I am exposed by my confession and brought through that death into new life, placed deep in the presence of God through the purifying fires of faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

John answered and said to the people, “Indeed, I, I baptize you [with] water; but one comes who is stronger than me for whom I am not fit to untie the strap of his sandals. He, he will baptize you with [the] Holy Spirit and fire.” (Lk. 3:16)

In chapter 3, Luke brings us face to face with John. According to the first part of chapter three, John, the son of Zechariah, is going about the region of the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance (vv. 2-3). In v. 7, people are coming to John in the Jordan to be baptized, and he is verbally exposing them and exhorting them to better life lived in the world (vv.7-14). Due to this interaction, the people begin to wonder with excitement that John might be the Messiah (v. 15).

Luke tells us John senses this building excitement and wonder about his role in God’s activity in the world, and quickly nips all speculation in the bud, Indeed, I, I baptize you [with] water; but one comes who is stronger than me whom I am not fit to untie the strap of his sandals. He, he will baptize you with [the] Holy Spirit and fire (v. 16). John makes a clear distinction here between the baptism he offers in the coming reign of God and the one Jesus will offer. His cleanses the outside, Jesus’s will cleanse not only the outside but also the inside. Luke has a couple of objectives in mind by placing these words on John’s tongue. First, at the time of writing, there were factions remaining of those who followed John and those who followed Jesus; for Luke, not even John wants anyone following him because he is one who points to Jesus (his is more prophet[1] than Christ).[2] Here, Luke, through John, places articulated emphasis on the baptism that Jesus will offer as the superior baptism to his water baptism. While both water and fire clean, only fire will purify.[3]

Luke’s second objective: to expose the significant difference between John’s baptism and Jesus’s (it’s not only that one is more powerful). The bigger difference is that one baptism includes receiving something. Where John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance and being washed clean with water (full stop), John does not claim to give anyone anything to fill the now vacant spot washed. But, according to Luke’s John, Jesus does. What is this gift? The Holy Spirit. The believer, the one who is baptized with fire and the Holy Spirit, receives the Holy Spirit in Jesus name via baptism. In other words, John’s baptizands aren’t empowered with anything, they’re just washed clean; Jesus’s are.[4] Those who receive the baptism of Jesus with fire and the Holy Spirit also receive the Holy Spirit and it is this “paraclete” (according to the gospel of John) who exposes and who empowers Jesus’s followers (i.e. through exposure and exhortation, or the growth discussed in the book of Ephesians) into the way of wisdom, love, and truth[5] and will continue to do so long after Jesus ascends.[6]

John then retreats to some rather intimidating imagery of judgment. Who has his winnowing shovel in hand to thoroughly purify his threshing floor and collect the grain into his grainery, but the chaff he will consume entirely [by] unquenchable fire (v. 17). Again, there are two important things being articulated here. The first is the comparison of Jesus and his baptism with fire and the Holy Spirit as an act of judgment,[7] or, what I would call “exposure”. The winnowing shovel is judgment; to winnow is to separate the chaff from the grain. For Luke’s John, Jesus comes with a winnowing shovel to judge by exposing everything to fire (judgment). This winnow shovel language echoes back to what John said at the beginning of the chapter about the axe being laid at the base of the tree to chop down those trees that are fruitless.[8] Thus judgment is clearly and explicitly intended here and no one is escaping divine fire! But, (and second) how Luke relays this winnowing is important: it’s in the past tense; as in: it’s already happened. Return to the imagery with me, one will come with a winnowing shovel and the grain will be collected together while the chaff is burned in the unquenchable fire. Thus, the winnowing has already been done by the time the collecting together of the grain and the burning of the chaff. In other words, for Luke, John has winnowed and Jesus will collect and the left over unusable parts will be burned up. Those who respond positively to John’s call for baptism by water will be the grain that is gathered up by Christ and baptized by him. [9] According to Luke, John is the fork in the road; if you are open to repentance baptism, then you are open to what comes when the Christ shows up. [10]

Then our passage closes with the well told story of Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan with John. Here Luke solidifies Jesus’s dual identification with God and with humanity;[11] demonstrating that Jesus is, without need of repentance, in solidarity with humanity’s plight (needing repentance) [12] as well as in solidarity with God’s mission in the world to bring absolution (the purification with fire and the Holy Spirit) to the beloved. As one of the many people in the Jordan, Jesus, too, is baptized; yet, as the one who is God’s son, he is recognized by God as God’s own by the opening of the heavens (v.21), and the Holy Spirit like a dove[13] came down bodily upon him, and a voice out of heaven came about, “You, You are my son; with you I am well-pleased” (v. 22). According to Luke, Jesus is the Son of Humanity and the Son of God, the one through whom God’s redemption comes[14] and through whom humanity will be both restored and represented in the heavenly realms.

Conclusion

To be baptized of water, to be cleaned by water is great; to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and God’s divine fire in the name of Christ is the call of anyone who follows Jesus out of that Jordan on that day and every day after that. Something I find interesting here is that this passage speaks not of two different fires but of one. Just like it is one light that illuminates the darkness, sending the darkness to its demise while illuminating that which is in the room; so does the divine fire that comes with the Christ send that existential and spiritual dirt to its demise while rendering the beloved object of that fire new and pure. The very thing that sends me into the hot shower to cleanse from head to toe is obliterated life chaff sent to the unquenchable fire in my confession and my recollection that I am baptized in Christ and with the Holy Spirit. Yet, I, in my flesh and in my soul do not escape that fire, but suffer through it like pottery in a kiln or gold in the refinery; what is left of the fire that surges over and through me is what is collected and stored in the grainery to serve and participate in God’s mission in the world, following after Jesus and walking within the same sand impressions left behind by my savior as he left the water. In my confession and in my need for Christ, I am summoned out of and away from death (chaff) and placed in the heart of God’s love, given new life, and sent forward in liberation renewed by faith and empowered by the Holy Spirit. That which is sentenced to death (my guilt, shame, regret, anything that hinders me from new life) is burned up forever, and that which is sentenced to life abundant (me, myself, and I) are refined and collected up into the grainery to be used by God in the world to God’s glory and the wellbeing of the neighbor, God’s beloved.

We, as God’s beloved, are called to walk through the one fire and to let God take what is chaff and burn it up completely and purify and refine by the baptism of Christ that is with God’s Holy Spirit and fire that which is to be collected as grain. In the event of faith, we, as God’s beloved, are brought into death and through it, finding ourselves resurrected on the other side, purified and made clean, inside and out, to be as Christ in the world, to represent God by word and deed, and to identify with the suffering and plight of our neighbors.

[1] Gonzalez, Luke, 50. “Thus what John is saying is that he is not even worthy to be counted among the lowest servants of the one whose coming he announces…In brief, Luke presents John as perhaps the greatest among the prophets and as the heir to the long line of leaders of Israel who significance was announced in that they were born of barren women; but even so, John cannot even be compared with Jesus.”

[2] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 50. Luke is emphasizing Jesus over John “This is an important point for Luke, who apparently was writing at time when there were still those who claimed to be followers of John but not of Jesus and such views had spread beyond the confines of Judea to Diaspora Judaism…”

[3] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “John baptizes with water; but Jesus will baptize ‘with the Hoy Spirit and with fire.’ Both water and fire are purifying agents; but fire is much more potent than water. Water may wash away whatever is unclean; but fire burns it away.”

[4] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Thus in Lukan theology there is a difference between a baptism of repentance, which is what John performed, and baptism in the name of Jesus, which is connected with receiving the Holy Spirit. John calls people to repent, and when they do this he baptizes them as a sign that they are cleaned of their former impurity. But Christian baptism, while still employing water, is ‘with the Holy Spirit and with fire.’ It is a cleansing (fire) and empowering (Holy Spirit).”

[5] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 54. “Octavio: ‘The Holy Spirit is Wisdom.’
Julio: ‘It’s love for others.’
Gloria: ‘And the fire is love too.’
Eduardo: ‘Because it gives light and warmth.’
Tere: ‘And also because it purifies.’”

[6] Joel B. Green, “The Gospel of Luke,” The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids): Eerdmans, 1997), 180. “The conjunction of the Holy Spirit and fire in this baptism is puzzling within the context of Luke-Acts. The Holy Spirit has been present repeatedly in 1:5-2:52, where such roles as empowering and guiding were paramount; for Luke thus far the Holy Spirit has been a manifestation of eschatological blessing and an empowering presence critical to God’s redemptive mission. Baptism ‘with the Holy Spirit,’ then, must surely be related to these themes even if other connections of the Spirit with cleansing and purging are also in view. Fire, too, can have this meaning, and it may be that the figure John anticipates will administer s single baptism of refinement and empowerment.”

[7] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Furthermore, fire is a sign of impending judgment. John had declared that the axe was now at the root of the tree, so that a fruitless tree would be cut down and burned. Now something similar is said about the coming of Jesus: he comes with a winnowing fork in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, saving the former and burning the latter.”

[8] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Furthermore, fire is a sign of impending judgment. John had declared that the axe was now at the root of the tree, so that a fruitless tree would be cut down and burned. Now something similar is said about the coming of Jesus: he comes with a winnowing fork in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, saving the former and burning the latter.”

[9] Green, Luke, 182. “…the language John uses actually presumes that the process of winnowing has already been completed. Consequently, all that remains is to clear the threshing floor, and this is what John pictures. This means that John’s ministry of preparation is itself the winnowing, for his call to repentance set within his message of eschatological judgment required of people that they align themselves with or over against God’s justice. As a consequence, the role of Messiah is portrayed as pronouncing or enacting judgment on the people on the basis of their response to John.”

[10] Green, Luke, 182. “…it is important to realize that John presents his baptismal activity as an anticipation of the Messiah’s; his baptism forces a decision for or against repentance, and this prepare for the Messiah’s work…”

[11] Cardenal, Solentiname, 56. “One of the women said: ‘to give us an example. He didn’t need baptism but we did, and he did it so we would do it when we saw that even he did it.’” And, “Somebody else said: ‘And he could also have done it out of humility. He was with his people, with his group, and he wasn’t going to say: “I don’t need this, you do it, I don’t have any sin.” The others, the Pharisees, might say that, the ones who didn’t follow John. Not Jesus, he goes along with the others.”

[12] Cardenal, Solentiname, 56. “Alejandro: ‘You could also say out of solidarity. So he wouldn’t be separated form the group.’”

[13] Cardenal, Solentiname, 57. “‘It wasn’t that a dove descended, because it doesn’t say that a dove descended but “like a dove.” A dove is a soft and loving little animal. And the Holy Spirit is loving. It was the love of God that descended upon him.’”

[14] Green, Luke, 187. “The purpose of the divine voice in 3:22 is above all that of providing an unimpeachable sanction of Jesus with regard to his identity and mission. Working in concert with the endowment of the Holy Spirit, this divine affirmation presents in its most acute form Jesus’ role as God’s agent of redemption. This accentuates Jesus’ role as God’s representative, the one through whom God’s aim will be further presented and worked out in the story, but it also demonstrates at least in a provisional way the nature of Jesus’ mission by calling attention to the boundaries of his exercise of power.”

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Beloved Little Children of God

Psalm 146: 1-2, 4 Hallelujah! Praise Abba God, O my soul! I will praise Abba God as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, for there is no help in them. Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help, whose hope is in their God…

Introduction

Last week we were reminded that there are no external boundaries that create a Christian group; in fact, we could say that based on what we learned in Ephesians and what we learned last week boundaries—dividing walls, traditions forcing some to withdraw from and exclude others—are anathema to reign of God. If so, then why do we—Christians—seem deadest on creating barriers to inclusion with the ecclesia and God?

I ponder this question a lot because of where I find myself caught in this particular socio-political timeline. I may be too sensitive here, but the lines between who is “right” and who is “wrong” are appearing to be deeper and thicker than ever before. It feels easy to pull apart right now, to cut ties, to wipe the dust from your sandals and move on. It feels safe to fall deep into your own party of ideas and ideologies, to surround yourself with those just like you, to shrug and sidestep those “others” who don’t think like you. It even feels good to be really frustrated and angry, to give into fear, to have anxiety and worry about the global dumpster-fire we seem trapped in. Even if easy, safe, and good feels really good (and it can feel really darn good), for Christians that path is contrary to the path articulated to us by Christ, the one we are supposed to travel, to walk in, and to grow through.

In short, part of Christian praxis and identity in the world is our burden to pull together and not pull apart, to dare to step into the void of the unknown and risk our comfort and safety, and to relinquish our addiction to anger and fear so to disrupt hostility and enmity with equity and justice. We are exhorted to see that even those whom we might call “dogs” are none other than our dear siblings, beloved little children of God.

Mark 7:24-37

And then he was saying to her, ‘You permit the children to be filled first, for it is not honorable to take the bread of the children and drop it to the little house dogs.’ And she answered and says to him, ‘[Yes] Lord, even the little house dogs under the dining table eat from the crumbs of the little children.’ And he said to her, ‘On account of this word, go; the evil spirit has gone out of your daughter.’ (Mk 7:27-29)

Mark continues the story from where we left off last week. After addressing the crowd about what actually makes a person clean or unclean (hint: it’s not what goes in but what comes out), Jesus sets out: Now, from there, writes Mark, he rose and departed toward the territory of Tyre. Tyre was a region that was connected to Palestine and exerted financial dominance over Galilee; in some historical documents, the Tyrians are considered Israel’s “‘notoriously… bitterest enemies.’”[1] Within this relatively small detail, Mark demonstrates that Jesus is continuing to push boundaries—even if reluctantly,[2] And then he entered a house desiring no one to recognize him and he was not able to escape notice. Mark highlights that the message about the dissolution of boundaries, of the destruction of traditions and dividing walls of the kingdom of humanity, is not only for the house of Israel but also for the neighboring territories (and the world).[3] Jesus’s traveling participate in God’s will: Gentiles are not excluded from the mission of the reign of God and the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.[4] God is for them, too; God is for the entire world and all humankind no matter the race, the color of the skin, the orientation and identity of the person.[5] If Jesus is the way to this God, then this way, this door, is wide open; [6] no one will be excluded because of random lines drawn in the sand willy-nilly separating this or that people.[7]

The story continues. Mark tells us that Jesus’s desire to go unnoticed by entering a house fails,[8] But at once, after hearing about [Jesus], a woman—whose daughter had an unclean spirit—came and fell before his feet. Now, the woman[was] Greek—Syrophoenician by race—and she was asking him to cast out the evil spirit from her little daughter. This isn’t just any person, and this isn’t just any woman. This is a desperate woman before God. This woman was willing to transcend religious tradition, social expectation, and political boundaries to heal her daughter (either her daughter or one related to her).[9] She is a thoroughly Gentile woman (the double identification emphasizes this point), and she carries the threat of ritual impurity because her daughter is possessed by an “unclean” spirit. There were many strikes against her: woman, Gentile, and unclean (ritually).[10] This woman is in great need and hears about Jesus being in Tyre and is willing to risk her wellbeing to seek healing for one whom she loves. Love does this; faith in Christ also does this.[11],[12]

But Jesus doesn’t reply to her in a way the reader would expect, considering what’s occurred thus far in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus says to her, ‘You permit the children to be filled first, for it is not honorable to take the bread of the children and drop it to the little house dogs.’ As one commentator said, Jesus’s response “is certainly not diplomatic,”[13] it is downright offensive (not only today but especially then[14]); he comes across as one who won’t help.[15] No matter how you parse it, the intentional term Jesus calls her, κυνάρια (translated as “little house dogs”), is flat-out insulting and dehumanizing (she’s a dog not a child—and this goes for her entire race).[16] At that moment, she had every reason to be discouraged.[17]

But rather than be discouraged, she seizes on a moment, or an image: Yes, Lord, even the little house dogs under the table eat from the crumbs of the young children. The “yes” is lost to our translation, but it’s there in spirit. She doesn’t disagree with the insult and then twists the image to emphasize that the little house dogs are happy to eat—even if second—the crumbs that fall to the floor and under the table; [18] in other words, it is right to let the crumbs fall into the possession of the dogs and let the dogs have their moment.[19] Theologically, what she sees here is the bold articulation of the power of the reign of God transcending not just local religious tradition but also socio-political division and boundaries; crumbs fall from the table for the children on to the floor where the dogs are.[20] Why shouldn’t they eat, too?

What happens next? Her daughter is delivered of the evil, unclean spirit. Jesus replied, this time full of grace, like one happy to be wrong,[21] and walks back his initial (human[22]) comment and heals her daughter with one (divine) word,[23],[24] On account of this word, go!; the evil spirit has gone out of your daughter. Just as he did before over dirty hands and she did just then about dogs, Jesus demonstrates that the tradition and boundaries of the kingdom of humanity are no match for the transcending power of the reign of God and the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.[25] The divine equity of God’s mission in the world is pronounced here: it is not about being exclusive but inclusive; the bread of life will be shared with all no matter who they are or from where they hail.[26] She, too, is a child of God, worthy of living bread.[27]

Conclusion

According to Mark’s Jesus, no one—absolutely no one—is to be excluded from the presence of God made known in Christ and revealed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore here, in this passage from Mark, we are given every reason and motivation to pull together, to step outside of our comfort and safety, and relinquish our anger and fear. According to Mark’s Jesus, no one is so far gone to be outside of God’s great reach.

What is most paramount in this passage for us today—the thing that really jumps out at me, the thing that Mark wants his audience to understand—is that we are to be a healthy amount skeptical of the traditions and dogmas of the kingdom of humanity and how these very things have infiltrated our theology and worship, causing us to gate-keep, calling it God’s will. In this passage, Mark wants us to see that Jesus turns his back on the conception of God’s will that leads to exclusivist thinking, ranking some humans as more important to God than others. Nothing is further from the truth. No one has a unique claim to God or those who belong to God. And we do not work from the idea that we are “right” as if everyone else is wrong; it’s not about right and wrong, which is the worst language to speak in; rather it’s about working from hope, hope and our being fully dependent on God and God’s word.*

Beloved, remember that you are the beloved little child of God, adopted into the family of God through faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit; remember, too, there are more people out there who think they are dogs and beyond God’s concern because that’s what our society has told them. To them we are sent; to them we go bringing God’s love, life, and liberation. To them and for them we bring divine equity and justice to the glory of God.

*This is inspired from Philip G. Ziegler’s AAR Paper (2023) “The Revolutionary Philanthropy of God–The Dogmatic Engine of Paul L. Lehmann’s Theological Ethics,” San Antonio, TX, p. 6. “…those who subsequently are impelled to ‘move against the focus of power’ in the existing social and political situation do not do so from a position of self–possession and strength–a position of right–but as those undone by judgment and grace and so in repentance, humility, and hope for others. Lehmann emphasizes that Christians and revolutionaries–Christians as revolutionaries–always ‘bear a righteousness not their own’ (Phil 3:9). They cannot and do not pursue their own righteousness; rather, their ethical and political adventure seeks only the righteousness of their neighbor.”

[1] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 297. “Tyre, whose territory adjoined northern Galilee, had long been an important trading city. It had close links with Palestine, particularly under Herod the Great, and its coinage was widely circulated there; indeed, it exercised considerable economic dominance over the neighbouring area of Galilee. But it was clearly foreign territory, and Josephus…describes the Tyrians as ‘notoriously our bitterest enemies.’”

[2] France, Mark, 294. “[Jesus’s] initial intention is apparently not to engage in a ‘Gentile mission’ as such but simply to remain incognito (7:24), but events soon dictate otherwise and he responds, even if at first reluctantly, to Gentile needs.”

[3] France, Mark, 294. “The debate about purity has raised the question of how far, if at all, the mission of Jesus has a relevance beyond the community of Israel, whose observance of the Mosaic food laws was an effective practical barrier to social contact with those who did not observe them.”

[4] France, Mark, 294. “Mark’s specific deduction that Jesus’ teaching has ‘made all food clean’ signals a radically new approach which will in due time make possible the integration of Jews and Gentiles into a single community of discipleship.”

[5] France, Mark, 294. “The first pericope…highlights the racial issue, as Jesus. ‘debates’ with the Syrophoenician woman the basis on which the ‘children’s bread’ can properly be enjoyed also by the ‘dogs’…”

[6] France, Mark, 296. “Within that sequence this pericope marks the further opening of the door rather than an attempt to sing it shut again.”

[7] France, Mark, 296. “The whole encounter builds up to the totally positive conclusions of vv. 29-30, while the preceding dialogue serves to underlines the radical nature of this new stage in Jesus’ ministry into which he has allowed himself to be ‘persuaded’ by the woman’s realism and wit.”

[8] France, Mark, 297. “…Jesus wishes to get away from public attention…uses a ‘house’ for the purpose…but is unable to escape those in need.”

[9] France, Mark, 297. “…there is no doubt that here [Ἑλλην]carries its normal biblical connotation of Gentile (as opposed to Jewish), and the term Συροφοινίκισσα (the prefix Συρο- distinguished the Phoenicians of the Levant form those of North Africa around Carthage) reinforces the point. That such a woman chose to approach a Jewish healer, and even fell at his feet, indicates either desperation or a remarkable insight into the wider significance of Jesus’ ministry…”

[10] France, Mark, 297. “Few of those who approached Jesus had so much against, them, from an orthodox Jewish point of view. She was….a woman, and therefore one with whom a respectable Jewish teacher should not associate. She was a Gentile, as the double designation Ἑλληνίς Συροφοινίκισσα emphasizes. And her daughter’s condition might be expected to inspire fear and/or disgust, while the ‘uncleanness’ of the demon suggests ritual impurity.”

[11] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 104. “Unlike Jairus, she seems to take for granted that Jesus can work cures at a distance. Before a word is exchanged, she is already presented as a woman of deep faith.”

[12] Placher, Mark, 106. “It is her faith, though, that lies at the center of the story.”

[13] France, Mark, 298. “Jesus’ response, though nowhere near as brutal as in Matthew, is certainly not diplomatic.”

[14] Placher, Mark, 104. “What he says is harsh enough in our culture, but even harsher then, in a culture where dogs were not beloved house pets but disgusting scavengers who skulked about living on garbage. Calling someone a dog was a real insult…”

[15] France, Mark, 298. “The whole tone of the sentence is negative to the point of offensiveness, and suggests that Jesus has no intention of helping the woman.”

[16] France, Mark, 298. “The use of κυνάρια seems to add gratuitously to the Semitic neighbours as unclean animals. Biblical references to dogs…are always hostile. To refer to a human being as a ‘dog’ is a deliberately offensive or dismissive….Jews typically referred to Gentiles as dogs. The diminutive form (used in biblical literature only in this pericope), perhaps indicates the status of the dogs in Jesus’ image as dogs of the house rather than of the yard, but it does not remove the harshness of picturing Gentiles en masse as ‘dogs’ as opposed to ‘children’. It is the sort of language a Gentile might expect from a Jews, but to find it in a saying of Jesus is shocking.”

[17] France, Mark, 298. “…as a response to the Gentile woman’s request it is very harsh, and does not encourage her to expect help at the present time.”

[18] France, Mark, 298-299. “Jesus’ image (and his inclusion of πρῶτον) have given the woman the cue she needs, and enable her, on the basis of his own saying, to refute his οὐκ ἔστιν καλόν and replace it with a defiant Ναί, κύριε – ‘Yes, it is right’. By using the vocative κύριε (it’s only appearance in Mark…) the woman recognizes Jesus’ authority and her dependence on his help, but need not convey any more specific theological insight; it is an appropriate address to a distinguished stranger.”

[19] France, Mark, 299. “Jesus’ own image is thus pressed to its full extent, and provides the basis for her request to be granted, not refused. It is a remarkable twist to the argument, and one which displays as much humility on the woman’s part as it does shrewdness. She does not dispute the lower place which Jesus’ saying assumes for the Gentiles, and even accepts without protest the offensive epithet ‘dog’, but insists that the dogs, too, just have their day.”

[20] France, Mark, 299. “Putting it more theologically, the mission of the Messiah of Israel, while it must of course begin with Israel, cannot be confined there. The Gentiles may have to wait, but they are not excluded from the benefits which the Messiah brings. On this basis, she is bold enough to pursue her request; even the crumbs will be enough.”

[21] France, Mark, 296. “He appears like the wise teacher who allows, and indeed incites, his pupil to mount a victorious argument against the foil of his own reluctance. He functions as what in a different context might be called ‘devil’s advocate’, and is not disappointed to be defeated’ in argument.”

[22] Placher, Mark, 106. “Here yet again humanity and divinity come together in a single narrative of a single agent—the same Jesus who loses the argument can cure her daughter.”

[23] France, Mark, 299. “Διὰ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον makes it clear that the woman’s response, and the attitude which it reveals, has changed Jesus’s apparent intention. It is of course impossible now to be sure on the basis of the printed text alone whether his words were designed to provoke such a response, or whether he genuinely did intend to refuse her request and was persuaded by her argument. Much may have been conveyed by tone of voice and gesture. But Mark, by placing the incident in the setting of the opening up of Jesus’ ministry to the Gentiles…suggests that his initial reluctance should be taken with a pinch of salt.”

[24] Placher, Mark, 106. “If Mark did not show us Jesus’ initial harsh remark, we could not see the grace with which Jesus concedes defeat in an argument. That the woman does win the argument is a point any valid interpretation needs to acknowledge. To say that that could not happen is to deny Jesus’ full humanity.”

[25] France, Mark, 297. “That Jesus ultimately responded to a request from such a suppliant, and even that he was prepared to engage her in a serious dialogue, is typical of his unconcern for convention when it stood in the way of his mission.”

[26] France, Mark, 296. “As a result the reader is left more vividly aware of the reality of the problem of Jew-Gentile relations, and of the importance of the step Jesus here takes to overcome it. The woman’s ‘victory’ in the debate is a decisive watershed as a result of which the whole future course of the Christians movement is set not on the basis of Jewish exclusivism but of sharing the ‘children’s bread’.”

[27] Martin Luther, “Second Sunday in Lent,” Sermons Volume Two, trans. John Nicholas Lenker, et al, ed. John Nicholas Lenker. 2:126. “He compares her to a dog, she concedes it, and asks nothing more than that he let her be a dog, as he himself judged her to be. Where will Christ now take refuge? He is caught. Truly, people let the dog have the crumbs under the table; it is entitled to that. Therefore Christ now completely opens his heart to her and yields to her will, so that she is now no dog, but even a child of Israel.”

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For the Remaining Time…

Psalm 84:9-11 For one day in your courts is better than a thousand in my own room, and to stand at the threshold of the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of the wicked. For Abba  God is both sun and shield; God will give grace and glory…

Introduction

The author of Ephesians begins their final thoughts, weaving together all that has transpired. The Ephesians are reminded, once again, to remember and have hope and thus to pray standing firm on the ground of remembrance of Christ and hope in God fort hey are sealed unto God and Christ by the power the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1). There is great unity and wholeness for this sealed body of believers who are united together through memory and hope and prayer; the Ephesians are asked to look again at the absence of the division wall of the fence, of enmity and hostility, of laws that keep some in and some out (Eph 2). The exhortation to grow (Eph 3) echoes, the arduous task of bringing the outer person in line with the inner person is not a one-and-done thing; it is daily arising and intentionally (re)learning about God’s love made tangible in Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirt. The movement from doxology to praxis and ethics is once again solidified as our praise of God informs our activity in the world to the well-being of the neighbor which returns our ethical activity into doxology and the praising of God‘s name and bringing God glory because God’s love pro nobis (for us) is the bedrock and the source of our power in the world before God (coram deo)and before humanity (coram hominibus) (Eph. 4). The emphasis on the truth is affirmed again as the Ephesians are given real ways to participate in the cosmic battle between the truth of the reign of God and the untruth of the kingdom of humanity through keeping track on how their words and deeds toward and about others either builds up or tears down, being reminded that our words (especially) and our deeds (generally) participate in the sacramental nature of the communication of God’s grace to others (Eph. 4-5).

And now in these final exhortations, Paul describes the believer as a warrior, but not one laden with the weaponry of the kingdom of humanity with the intent to harm and destroy flesh and blood, but a warrior of the reign of God, clothed in Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and absolutely, positively, dependent on God and God’s love, ready to go out, divine orders in hand, to participate in God’s mission in the world.

Ephesians 6:10-20

For the remaining time, be filled with power by Christ and in the strength of his ability. Be clothed in the complete armor of God so as to be able to stand firm against the wiliness of the devil. For the struggle against blood and flesh is not for us. Rather, [we are to struggle] with the kingdom of humanity, with authorities, with the ruler of this world of darkness, with the spiritual hosts of iniquity in the heavenly speres. (Eph. 6:10-12)

Paul begins these final remarks for this remaining time by exhorting the Ephesians to press into Christ, to find themselves empowered not by their own will power but by the power of Christ and in the strength of [Christ’s] ability.[1] Everything comes from God: it starts with God and it ends with God,[2] so goes Ephesians. [3] For what the Ephesians are going to stand to do in remaining times cannot be done by human strength alone, but only by the will and power of God through Christ by the Holy Spirit—the same power that turned death into life on Easter morning.[4],[5]

Following the exhortation to be strong in and by Christ, is: be clothed in the complete armor of God so as to be able to stand firm against the wiliness of the devil. This is the adversary against which the Ephesians must contend; this is why they are to press into the strength of Christ and his ability so that they can follow in Christ’s footsteps and refute the devil’s advancements at every point. Thus, they are to put on/be clothed in the offensive and defensive equipment of God;[6] this means they must take off the offensive and defensive equipment of the kingdom of humanity. Just as one cannot have two masters, one cannot be dressed in two version of complete armor. Just as the Ephesians are exhorted to ditch the lies and the untruths of the kingdom of humanity and adhere to the truth of the reign of God (contending with the old Adam within themselves so that the new Adam may be born anew[7]), so are they to be dressed appropriately in the panoply of God.[8]

Clothed as such, the Ephesians can confront the devil and his craftiness and not other human beings. For Paul writes, Because the struggle for us is not against blood and flesh. Rather, [we are to struggle] with the kingdom of humanity, with authorities, with the ruler of this world of darkness, with the spiritual hosts of iniquity in the heavenly speres. In other words, the Ephesians are neither to take up real weapons to fight against other human beings (uh oh, Church History) nor are they to take it upon themselves to defend God and legislate God’s will (uh oh, Christian Nationalists);[9] rather, they are to wrestle like athletes[10] against the advancements of the “devil” and the powers antagonistic to the divine revolution of love, life and liberation. I could say it another way, the Ephesians are to combat untruth with truth, light with not light, love with not love (etc.). This is a wrestling/boxing match that will last until Christ comes again, and not something human beings—no matter how well intended—can do of their own power. With this preparation, clothing, and orientation in the world, the Ephesians, says Paul, should be able to withstand in the toilsome day and stand accomplishing everything. What God has set out to do—reconcile the beloved to God’s self, bringing love, life and liberation to the cosmos—God will do; the Ephesians are invited in and encouraged to participate and stand firm during these dark days (today and tomorrow[11]),[12] fully dependent and made able by God.[13]

Then Paul lists the different elements of the complete armor of God: putting on the belt[14] of truth, putting on the cuirass of justice, binding under the feet the solid foundation of the good news of peace, and with all [this] taking up the large shield of the faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming javelins of the evil one, receive the helmet [of victory] of salvation and the dagger from the Spirit, which is the word of God. The Ephesians are exhorted to gird themselves and be led by God and God’s truth; they are not to be girded and lead away by someone else or untruth.[15] They are to be fully covered in protective armor by God’s righteousness which is God’s justice; not only do they have God and God’s justice on their side, they stand on and have truth binding them, being conformed to God’s will, to pursue what God pursues. This does not mean doing things in God’s name by baptizing human action as God’s will. Rather, it is to be the clay vessels through whom God brings God’s justice: life, love, and liberation. The Ephesians, thusly, stand on the gospel that is the proclamation of Christ and the work of Christ that brings peace—the elimination of dividing walls, enmity, and laws of division—the word that makes humanity one.[16] The Ephesians are to put out the flaming arrows of the evil one with their shield of faith, thus faith—see rightly by the power of God—can put out the destructive untruths of the kingdom of humanity; here, the Ephesians do not fight fire with fire,[17] but extinguish the lies by faith by speaking the truth in love.[18] They are to wear their helmet of victory because what God started God will finish and victory is already God’s; thus the Ephesians can enter their spiritual battles knowing their victory is secured.[19] Last, they are to use the one weapon they have, the word of God; [20] the goal is not to tear down but to defend the lives of others with the word of God, to build up, to protect, to advocate, to resist on behalf of the neighbor, to, ultimately, proclaim the good news that brings liberation to the captives.[21]

Paul closes with an(other) exhortation to prayer. Throughout the letter of Ephesians, prayer has been the backbone concept throughout the text.[22] Now it comes out full force, through all prayer and supplication, pray in the Spirit in all seasons, and toward this being awake with all steadfastness and entreaty on behalf of all the holy ones, and on behalf of me… Prayer is both the way the believer is clothed in the complete armor of God and is the seizing of the sword of God, the word—not purely scripture, but the living breathing word of life, love and liberation that ushers forth from God’s lips anew every day.[23],[24] It is the core of the life of the believer in the world who, facing both good and bad times, is the representative of Christ, thus of God among and with the beloved of God—thus, the exhortation to be awake[25] and with all steadfastness and entreaty on behalf of all…[26] The faithful representative of God brings God close the neighbor and, through prayer, brings the neighbor close to God.

Conclusion

So, beloved, Ephesians leaves us drenched and soaked in the presence of God. What started off with remembering and hoping and prayer, ends with them. We are, according to Ephesians, part and participant in this great cloud of witnesses that not only sees God’s glory but also gets to share in bringing that glory further and deeper into the world. You may feel insignificant for such a cosmic task, but you are the perfect and most precious breakable vessel spreading God’s mission in the world. Together here, through our minds and our hearts, we see, hear, and experience in the proclamation of Christ the destruction of the dividing walls, the elimination of enmity, and the rendering obsolete oppressive laws. Each week, according to Ephesians, we grow in this knowledge of divine equity and we grow more mature in our knowledge and love of God and as a community eager to reach out and support each other, to stand in solidarity together, to have compassion, and to care. Then we bring this very reality out into the world—each of us—as God’s representatives, charged with an invaluable charge to participate in God’s divine revolution of love, life, and liberation. And this brings us back here, again, to remember, to hope, and to pray. Our doxology becomes our praxis that comes back again as our doxology.

[1] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 760. “…a power which comes to man from outside is meant, rather than an increase in strength flowing from internal resources.”

[2] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 249-250. “…’Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.’ The ‘in the lord’ signals the solidarity with the Lord, and ‘in the strength of his power’ displays that we have been made alive together with him (2:5). We have been raised with him; we are seated with him above the principalities and powers (2:6) it is not our own strength upon which we rely; it is God’s strength. But we must live in it! We mut perform our baptism, our being raised with Christ, our being united not only to Christ but to those who are different from us to those the culture of enmity has trained us to despise…”

[3] Barth, Ephesians, 760. “…no strength other than God’s own can fortify the saints…”

[4] Barth, Ephesians, 760. “They are ‘citizens…in the kingdom of the Messiah and God’ (2:19, 5:5); they live from the incomparable power that was demonstrated in the past through the resurrection of Christ and the subjugation of all other powers (1:19-21), and that will now and from day to day strengthen the heart of each individual. (3:16-19).”

[5] Barth, Ephesians, 760-761. “The strength available to them is the resurrection power; more briefly, God is their power in person. They can and shall rely on it, that is, on Him.”

[6] Barth, Ephesians, 761. Panoply “…often the term means the full and complete equipment of a soldier with weapons of offense and defense. …It can also serve as a summary description of all the apparel with which a woman ‘dresses up’ to show herself in public.”

[7] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 250-251. “This is a cosmic conflict that is as old as sin. To be sure, it is a battle that is fought on the turf of every soul. A battle rages between ‘the old self’ and the ‘new self,’ a battle between our inclination to hate and despise and our participation in the peaceable difference of our creation and renewal. From the beginning the vision in Ephesians has been cosmic in scope and social and political in its implications. Here it would enlist us in a battle not only or our own souls but especially for the renewal of the cosmos and humanity.”

[8] Barth, Ephesians, 762. “The saints are ‘able’-bodied men not by nature, nor by one act of ordination in the past (e.g. by their baptism), but only inasmuch as again and again they take up the special armor given to them.”

[9] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 251. “The final struggle is not ours to win; that is already sure and in God’s hands. But in the interim we are to resist the resistance to God’s cause. We are not called to defend God, not even called exactly to defend our own souls; we are called to defend the beachheads God’s cause has made, they displays here and there of a renewed creation and a new humanity, the places and times that bear the primes of God’s good future.”

[10] Barth, Ephesians, 763. “No doubt Eph 6 describes a ‘spiritual war’ and ‘spiritual weapons’; but rather than use the term ‘war’ (polemos) Paul chooses a concept that originally denotes the activity of an athlete.”

[11] Barth, Ephesians, 765. Darkest day may be just a reference to evil days in a regular life or “may indicate that even now is the last time.”

[12] Barth, Ephesians, 765. “….’taking up’ is sometimes a a technical military term. It describe the last preparation and final step necessary before the actual battle begins.”

[13] Barth, Ephesians, 766. “In Eph 6 far more emphasis is placed on readiness and firmness in the struggle than upon any actual human accomplishment during the battle. The good works which they will do according to 2:10 are prepared by God’ long beforehand.”

[14] Barth, Ephesians, 767. “girdle” belt “…the special belt or sash…designating an officer or high official.”

[15] Barth, Ephesians, 767. “For the strength of God’s power is promised to each of them, and the expression ‘gird one’s loins’ …is synonymous with the idiom, ‘gird with strength.’ The opposite is to be girded by someone else and to e led away involuntarily…or to be girded with a. rope or with sackcloth…”

[16] Barth, Ephesians, 771. “The ‘peace’ and the ‘gospel’ to which Eph 6:15 refers can only be the ‘peace made’ and ‘proclaimed’ by the Messiah which is described in 2:13-18. It is not a victory of men inside God’s kingdom over men outside it that make the saints stand ‘steadfast.’ Rather the Messianic ‘peace’ which has united and will further draw together ‘those far’ and ‘those near’ gives the strength to resist non-human, demonic attacks however spiritual their origin.”

[17] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 255. “Compared to the armor of the Zealots and the Roman soldiers, this list of items—truthfulness and righteousness and the proclamation of the gospel of peace, faithfulness and the gifts of salvation and the word—is deeply countercultural. There is no confidence in the ordinary weapons of war; there is confidence in God. it is as deeply countercultural as peace and unity in the midst of the cultures of enmity that marked the life of the first century.”

[18] Barth, Ephesians, 774. “Instead of flame throwers and napalm-canisters by which the opponents and their strongholds might be burned, they are given shields which ‘enable them to quench’ (only) the fire thrown at them. The fiery attacks endured now are unlike the fire of the last judgment of God who which all men and all the creation will be exposed…”

[19] Barth, Ephesians, 775. “Most likely, a ‘helmet of victory’ is in mind which is more ornate than a battle helmet and demonstrates that the battle has been won: the saints are to ‘take’ this helmet as a gift from God. they go into battle and stand the heat of the day in full confidence of the outcome, with no uncertainty in their minds; for they were the same battle-proven helmet which God straps on his head…and which is defined by ‘impartial justice’ in…”

[20] Barth, Ephesians, 777. “Whether a traditional or a freshly inspired ‘word of God’ is in mind, this ‘word’ can be called the cutting edge of the Spirit—but it must be maintained that the word itself, not the Spirit, is the sword.”

[21] Barth, Ephesians, 777. “Therefore it is probable that the ‘word of God,’ which he calls a ‘sword,’ has to do mostly directly with the preaching of the gospel and with prayer, or is identified with them.”

[22] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 258. “We are not surprised to find that the last world of the exhortation is an exhortation to pray. Prayer here, finally, is a form of watchfulness, of waiting and hoping for God’s good future. It is a way to ‘stay alert.’ But here too this form of attention to God, this waiting and hoping, is not simply passivity. Attentive to God, we are attentive to the one who makes us agents in God’s cause, the one who invites us to bless God, the one who invites our lives and our common life to be doxology, to be for ‘the praise of [God’s] glory’ (1:12,14).”

[23] Barth, Ephesians, 777. “In consequence, persistent ‘prayer’ can be the essence and modality of the whole process of arming oneself, or only of the seizing of the sword.”

[24] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 255. “The Spirit’s sword is not simply identical with Scripture, at least not as an artifact that we can hold in our hand. It is rather the powerful and creative Word of God.”

[25] Barth, Ephesians, 779. “The purpose of staying awake is ‘praying,’ rather than putting on arms.”

[26] Barth, Ephesians, 778. “Nothing less is suggested than that the life and strife of the saints be one great prayer to God, that this prayer be offered in ever new forms however good or bad the circumstance, and that this prayer not be self-centered but express the need and hope of all the saints.”

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Joining Our Voices to the Divine Symphony

Psalm 1:1a, 2-3 Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked…Their delight is in the law of Abba God, and they meditate on that law day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper.

Introduction

The church visible is a specific community of human beings with a specific summons in the world; and as the church invisible it is called to be in the world but not of the world because its fabric and substance is cultivated from and of divine spiritual essence. People both make and do not make the church. There is no church without the people (visible), but the church is not restricted to a certain group of people (invisible). Every church is called to participate as a locus of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world and in this way the church visible partakes of the long surging presence of the church invisible. We as a visible church are yoked to the larger invisible church extending through time, and we find our place in this history as we are, where we are holding space for God to show up and work through us as a site of divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.

In this way, the church cannot find its comfort in the material realm, but rather it must find it in God through dependence on Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s from this posture that the church can bring comfort into the world. Thus, the metrics of success offered by the world fall flat when judging the church; it is not always the largest, the wealthiest, and the building with the most things that is the one most closely aligned to the reign of God. To be in the world and of the world is to relinquish the message of Christ for the message of the world and therein stifle the life-giving proclamation of Christ crucified and raised; a message that breaks in and interrupts the messages of the world. To sacrifice the message of Christ for an acceptable message according to the world is to sacrifice a true message of a substantial and enduring comfort for the saccharine and temporary comfort of the world.

But the church, which is built from the dust of the ground, is animated by and dependent on the breath of God, the Word of God, the Spirit of God found in the encounter with God in the event of faith in Christ. The church is to be in the world and not of the world because the world and its inhabitants need a good word, a new word, a word of love, life, and liberation, one they didn’t come up with themselves.

John 17:6-19

Jesus prayed…“I am no longer in the cosmos and they, they are in the cosmos, and I, I come to you. Holy Elder, take care of them in your name which you have given to me, so that they are one just as we [, we are one]. When I was with them I, I was taking care of them in your name which you have given to me, and I guarded [them] and not one of them was lost if not the son of destruction…I, I have given to them your word, and the cosmos detested them, because they are not of the cosmos just as I, I am not of the cosmos.” (Jn 17:11-12b, 14)

This is the “Farewell Prayer.” Here, Jesus prays for his disciples, the ones he called to himself and thus to God and the same ones he is leaving. Jesus called each one by name and ushered them into the reality of God; they have been given new eyes to see, new ears to hear and thus they are now no longer of the world even though they are in it. The goal of the prayer is to make sure that the disciples whom Jesus is leaving behind in the world will remain in the truth that is God’s self-disclosure revealed by Christ (vv. 17, 19), and not fall prey to the oppression and hatred of the world thus cease remaining in Christ to seek comfort in the world.[1]

A thread that runs through the prayer is “oneness.” This oneness is part of the truth of God revealed in Christ: Jesus and God are one thus those who encounter Jesus encounter God; where Jesus goes, God goes, too.[2] When Jesus called the disciples, God called them. When they followed Jesus, they followed God. In being so summoned and in following, they become the community whose beginning is not of the world but of God even if they are in it.[3] Through Christ they have come to know God and are thus taken out of the world because they are substantiated by the word of God incarnated in Christ whom they follow and from whom they received the word of God.[4] The disciples—the ones called to form this community—make up the community that is of Jesus thus of God and this belonging to Jesus is the unique source of the community and the unique essence of its presence in the cosmos. Thus, the community cannot be of the world because its source and foundation is not temporal but spiritual; it is literally born of the spiritual substance of the word of God that is Jesus Christ and is made to be God’s incarnate presence in the world but not of the world.[5] Therefore, to try to exist outside of this divine source and be in the world and of the world will render the fledgling community nothing but a social club.

Now, as the prayer goes on, the community so prayed for by Christ is to take up the mission of God in the world that was revealed in and through Jesus’s self-witness in the world; the community is, like it’s source and forebear, to call into question the things of the world, to challenge the domination of the kingdom of humanity.[6] This is the hardship for the disciples left behind by Jesus; they will be homeless in the world but by being thusly homeless they will find their home (their being and substance, their source) in God. Here, nothing of the world can comfort them or justify their existence; they are solely and completely dependent on the Word of God in Christ.[7] And in this way they are perpetually at risk for falling into the lure of the world, thus why Jesus prays for them. They must resist the urge, and they must abide in the vine.[8]

It is through remaining and abiding in and with the vine (ch. 15), clinging to the Word of God, and being recipients of the divine, life-giving sap that is the fulfillment of the joy of Christ that is made complete in the community left behind.[9] The holiness (the consecration, the sanctifying) of the community is found in ὁ λόγος ὁ σὸς ἀλήθείᾳ έστιν (v. 17b). The identity of the community in the world is formed by the word of God that is truth; thus, it is not defined by the word of the world that is not truth. Anything apart from this word, for this community, disempowers its presence and leads it astray from the source of its life and identity and renders it merely pruned kindling; the holy community cannot depend on anything but the word of God for its love, life, and liberation in the world for the world.[10] From here and only from here anchored in the Word of God, like Jesus, can the community of Christ take up God’s divine proclamation of life, mission of love, and revolution of liberation in the world.[11]

Conclusion

Our hope as the church visible today is not to forget the source of the life of the invisible church. Now is the time to push more into the Word of God, to recall and retell the stories of Christ and the radical divine action made known through him. It is in pressing into this identity as the holy community formed and founded on the radical proclamation of God’s Word incarnate that is how we find ourselves further in the world though never of it. To press into God and God’s word is not to go backwards to some archaic time or to cling to legalism or fundamentalism; this is death because God’s word is living and breathing, not something of a year now long gone (this is to live under the kingdom of humanity). To press into God’s word and God is to press into life and movement forward into something new, different, and something that can summon the world to look up and forward (this is to live under the reign of God).

As tempting as it may seem at times to jettison this ancient and rather whacky proclamation for one a bit more tolerable to the world, I assure you that is the surest way to forfeit our identity as the Christian church in the world and give up our seat in this history. Without the foundation of the Word of God in Christ, we no longer have a unique message to bring into the world and will just blend into the background of the world’s cacophony. We cannot depend on our doctrines and institutions, some claim to God’s law, or some static conception of God of another era; recourse to this language is just the same as the world’s language…it’s recourse to temporal things that have no part in establishing spiritual realities. It is to try to grasp at dust returned to dust.

Rather as part of this long-ago prayed for community, we must hear the divine summons, dare to let go of the rope, and fall deeper into God. We must let ourselves become consumed with God’s passion for the world, for the beloved. It’s in this full dependence on God and God’s word that brings us in line with God and begins to spark the flames of divine revolution in our midst; reformation (revolution) always starts in God’s church with God’s word. In this we can join our voices to the celestial symphony and demand life where there is death, love where there is indifference, and liberation where there is captivity in the name of Christ to the glory of God.

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 498. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “For the evangelist—and for the source too—the imparting of the name of God is not the transmitting of a secret, power-laden word, such as in the mysteries, or in the soul’s heavenward journey, or in magic, take effect by being spoken; rather it is the disclosure of God himself, the disclosure of the ἀλήθεια.”

[2] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 498. “In the work that Jesus does, God himself is at work, in him God himself is encountered.”

[3] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 498. “…by [the disciples’] faith they testify that their origin does not lie in the world, but that from the very beginning they were God’s possessions. As those who preserver God’s word, mediated through the Revealer, they form the community for which he prays.”

[4] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 499. “From this kind of faith grew the true knowledge, και ἔγνωσαν ἀληθῶς…, which in turn is the means whereby faith comes to itself, καὶ ἐπίστευσαν. For what is known and what is believed are in fact the same; ὅτι παρὰ σοῦ ἐξῆλθον and ὅτι σύ με ἀπέστειλας mean the same thing. And the meaning is this: to understand Jesus as the revealer and so to come to know God (v. 3). This therefore is the Christian community: a fellowship, which does not belong to the world, but is taken out of the world; one that owes its origin to God, and is established by the Revealer’s word, recognised as such in the light of the Passion. i.e.. in the light of rejection by the world; a fellowship, that is to say, which is established only by t the faith that recognises God in Jesus.”

[5] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 500. “The community belongs to God only in so far as it belongs to Jesus; i.e. it has its origin in eternity only in so far as it holds fast to its origin in the eschatological event that is accomplished in Jesus. To say that it belongs to Jesus is significant only in that it thereby belongs to God (τὰ ἐμὰ πάντα σά έστιν) that it belongs to God becomes a fact only in in that it belongs to Jesus (τὰ σὰ ἐμά).”

[6] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 501. “But what is he?  As the revealer of God he is the Judge of the world, through whom the world is called in question; and he has his δόξα in the community inasmuch as it too means judgement for the world, and that through it the world is called in question.”

[7] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 501. “His δόξα cannot be seen at the present time like the glory of a Messiah. There is no way of point to it in the world, except paradoxically, in that the community which is a stranger to the world is also an offence to it. Thus the community cannot prove itself to the world. Nor can its members comfort themselves in the things they possess…”

[8] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 502. “From what has gone before it is at once clear that the prayer for their protection is the prayer that the community which stands in the world be protected from falling back into the world’s hands, that it be kept pure in its unworldly existence.”

[9] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 506. “To say that this joy is to be shared by the disciples πεπληρωμένη, is to say, as in 15:11, that the joy they have already received through him will be brought to its culmination; the significance of turning to him in faith is found in the believer’s life becoming complete as eschatological existence.”

[10] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 509. “Marked off from the world, the community is to live in the world as holy community. But it can only enjoy this state of separation from the world in virtue of the revelation on which it is founded, which is nothing other than the word of God transmitted to it through Jesus. Hus its holiness is not due to its own quality, nor can it manufacture its differentiation from the world by itself, by its rite, its institution, or its particular way of lie; all this can only be a sign of its difference from the world, not a means of attaining it. [The community’s] holiness it therefore nothing permanent, like an inherited possession: holiness is only possible for the community by the continual realisation of tis world-annulling way of life, i.e.. by continual reference to the word that calls it out of the world, and to the truth that sets it free form the world.”

[11] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 510. “The community has a task analogous to his, and rooted in it…But it does not take over this assault or the duty to win the world solely by embarking on missionary enterprises; it does so simply by its existence.”

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“Buried in the Past, Captive to What Was”: Ash Wednesday

Psalm 103:20-22 Bless God, you angels, you mighty ones who do God’s bidding, and hearken to the voice of God’s word. Bless Abba God, all you his hosts, you ministers of God who do God’s will. Bless God, all you works of God, in all places of God’s dominion; bless Abba God, O my soul.

Introduction

We are about a month away from hitting the fourth anniversary of Covid_19 shutting down the world and turning it completely upside down. I can simultaneously believe and not believe that it’s been that long and only that long. It feels like yesterday and so long ago. Time feels thin right now, caught in a paradox of fast and slow, so close and yet so far away, here and not here.

But it’s not only time that feels caught in such a paradox. The atmosphere surrounding our bodies feels caught in its own paradox of familiar and strange. I don’t think I feel all that different than I did on March 12, 2020, but then I feel completely different, like maybe I don’t share one genetic similarity with that woman. But I do! She and I are one, and we did go through and are still going through that massive event that plunged the world into chaos.

And it’s more than just a personal sensation, something unique and private to me. It’s impacting all of us. And not only those of us here in this room, but in our community, in our state, in our nation, and in our world. This entire ball of matter orbiting its sun feels submerged in tumult. One global event after another arises, reminding us viscerally that our lives are short and our bodies fragile and vulnerable. We are not in control, are we? War and violence, genocide and extermination, hate and rage are the fuel motivating bloated egos consumed with power toward global extinction. Our own country grows continually divided over who has liberty and who doesn’t, xenophobia is (re)peaking (if you are not just like us then you are against us), our neighbors are becoming our supposed enemies to our own private freedom and liberty blinding us to the fact that we might be the enemy to ourselves; in short, everything and everyone is a threat. Our many places of worship, those once deemed sacred and safe places, are now battle-ground-zeros for so many people who are sure they know exactly what God thinks and wants, drawing lines thick and dark in the sand, meanwhile fighting terribly to keep their institutional heads above the waters of financial ruin and destitution, afraid to let death come and claim its victims and houses.

Almost four years ago we were thrown into a rupture in time and space, and—I don’t know about you—but it doesn’t feel like we’ve been rescued from it just yet. In fact, I’ll say it boldly, we have not been rescued; we’re still in the rupture. We are further in and further down, but not up and not out.

So, what do we do? Well, the tendency for human nature is to go backward, return to the shore of familiarity and comfortable, swim back to what was, and to ignore that our memory of the past silences malicious secrets and covers over terrible deeds. Humans are convinced that what we know is easier to battle than what we don’t know. We love to look backward with rose colored glasses and reminisce with fondness about things that, frankly, never truly existed as remembered. Our minds lie to us, lure us backward toward images of yesterday that are (actually) images of never-where and never-when. We are easily seduced by thoughts that somehow the past was better, more vibrant, simpler, without difficulty; wasn’t it easier back then…

Human beings have a hard time fighting against this lure and seduction of the romanticized past; the more we fight the more stuck we become. We are buried in the past, captive to what was.

Joel 2:1-2,12-17

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near–
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
nor will be again after them
in ages to come.

It seems Joel’s ancient, prophetic words ring true today. There is trembling among the people, darkness and gloom feel real while clouds and thick darkness taunt us from above. The day of God comes, and we’re yet to be saved from it. There is fear here, in Joel’s words. The people should be afraid of God, says Joel, but not of humanity.[1] But this fear is not because God’s principle characteristic is anger or wrath because God’s character is foremost longsuffering and patient, forgiving and merciful. [2],[3]

Yet even now, says the Lord,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
for the Lord, your God?

The people should fear this day of God’s arrival because God will come and expose that what the people have created as a sham: mere phantoms of good; things built in the image of humanity and not by the divine inspiration of God’s loving and gracious Spirit. Joel’s pronouncement of God’s coming judgment and anger summons the people out of themselves—their egos, their power, their pleasure, their comfort—and redirects them to a proper relationship to God (one of dependence and trust, one of reverence and forgiveness). Joel makes it clear, the people have gone astray, they must return to God because in this return God’s displeasure is (potentially) fleeting; it is a moment in time that happens, it will not last forever. [4]

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sanctify a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
gather the people.
Sanctify the congregation;
assemble the aged;
gather the children,
even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her canopy.

God loves God’s people; however, according to all the prophets of Israel and including Joel, God does not love it when the people forfeit their relationship with God for a relationship with power and privilege thus obstructing the wellbeing and livelihood of their neighbors. God does not deal kindly with such mischief. Thus, with their society on ethe edge of judgment and being engulfed by the divine pathos for the Beloved, according to Joel, God’s people can do something to mitigate this coming moment of wrath: they can turn to God because God is merciful and gracious[5] and this turning to God will turn away God’s displeasure,[6] especially if they return in time before God’s day of judgment arrives.[7]

Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples,
`Where is their God?'”

The Spiritual Leaders of God’s people, according to Joel, are to weep and pray. This is the beginning of a restored orientation toward God. The Spiritual Leaders petition God for God to spare the people and to honor God’s “heritage” thus establishing God’s people among the nations from this time forward. Therein God’s presence among the people will be sustained, letting the world know that God has not abandoned God’s people. Thus, Joel’s question posed by the mouths of priests, “Where is their God?” is moot because God is with them. However, if there is no return to God, then the bitter question remains on the mouths of Israel’s adversaries: where is the Lord your God?[8]

Conclusion

What direction should God’s people turn to return to a right relationship and orientation toward God? Not backward. Israel must not turn backwards to seek God because God is not located in the past, like a relic, stuck in the time and place of yesterday. By going backward, Israel would be betray just how deep is their alliance with their own image. To return to what is known and familiar is always to return to what is human, comprehended with the eyes and ears, to that which is known. To return to what is familiar to deprive God of faith and honor, trust and glory. Thus, it is the way of stagnancy and the status-quo, the way of fearing humans and not God. Going backward, for Israel, will seal their death sentence, hammer in the last nail in their coffin.

To return to God is to move forward into the unknown, to jump into the void, to dive into the rupture. It is all about facing the chaos and discomfort of that which is unseen and yet held by faith and hope. To hear the summons of God from the void, to sense the prophetic summons of God beckoning from the rupture, is to trust and to account to God that which is God’s: worthy of trust and faith; it is to proclaim that God is the truth and the way, thus God is the life. To move forward by faith and trust is to declare to the people and the world that God has not abandoned God’s people; to dive into the void is to affirm that even in this chaos God is present and able to bring order; to jump into the rupture is to render trustworthy God’s promises that all things are possible with God and that God can and will create out of nothing, once again.

So, today we stand at the edge of the void, on the precipice of the rupture, daring to hear the divine summons to enter this darkest of dark nights, and to hold on, by faith, to the presence of God as we tumble into what appears as death and nothingness. All the while we are beckoned to keep looking forward, holding God’s hand as God brings us to God and God’s new thing in the world—not an old thing, not a familiar thing, but a new thing. Tonight, we are brought deep into the divine womb to be born again of God by faith (trust) with thanksgiving into the divine light, life, and liberation. Born again as God’s people resurrected from the past and liberated from what was…

[1] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 209. “To fear God is to be unafraid of man. For God alone is king, power, and promise.”

[2] Heschel, Prophets, 285. “It is impossible to understand the meaning of divine anger without pondering the meaning of divine patience or forbearance. Explicitly and implicitly, the prophets stress that God is patient, long-suffering, or slow to anger…”

[3] Heschel, Prophets, 285. “Patience is one of the thirteen attributes of God,’ yet never in the sense of apathy, of being indifferent. Contrary to their thinking was the idea of a God who submits to the caprice of man, smiling at the hideousness of evil The patience of God means his restraint of justifiable anger.”

[4] Heschel, Prophets, 290. “Anger is always described as a moment, something that happens rather than something that abides. The feeling expressed by the rabbis that even divine anger must not last beyond a minute seems to be implied in the words of the prophets.”

[5] Heschel, Prophets, 290. “Merciful and gracious, rahum ve-hannun…are qualities which are never separable in the Bible from the thought of God.”

[6] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Joel,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1166. “As the text leads the readers to sense that human society and culture in Judah are at the brink of obliteration, it asks them to identify with a prophetic voice that calls on them to return to the Lord, to fast and lament. Then the book moves to Judah’s salvation and the rangement of passages dealing with the ideal future, in which the fate of the nations figures prominently.”

[7] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Joel,” 1170. 2.12-17, “On the need to turn back to the Lord, and for a communal lamentation. This must be done before the arrival of the Day of the Lord, which is near or close…otherwise Israel too will be the victim of God’s power.”

[8] Heschel, Prophets, 292fn17. “Anguished by the blows of enemies, Israel was the butt of stinging sneer: ‘Where is the Lord your God?’”

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Yesterday’s Song; Today’s Peace

Psalm 89:1-2 1 Your love, O God, for ever will I sing; from age to age my mouth will proclaim your faithfulness. For I am persuaded that your love is established for ever; you have set your faithfulness firmly in the heavens.

Introduction

The warmth of the holiday season, the festivity of lights and music, the cheeriness of people, and the fullness of celebrations and feasts solicit our radiant smiles and eager, welcoming hugs. It’s a time of year heralding hope from street corners and twinkling rooftops and yards, fueling faith deep within weary souls, and jumpstarting joy in the bodies of the young and the old—and those captured between—eager to get through the one to many demands of the end of the year.

Though this is true for half of us, I know it’s not true for the other half of us. The same lights and music, cheer, celebrations and feasts do anything but solicit such warm feelings. The holiday season conjures up feelings of sadness and longing over loved ones too far to celebrate with us, record a(nother) year someone won’t our door or sit at our table ushering in grief and sorrow, and spark anxiety and fear at the rising expectations to gather with those who have not always proved themselves safe to be around. Specifically, considering our own moment in history with wars and genocides plaguing our lands, human liberties being stripped away, and life and love being threatened on almost every side, it can be doubly hard to enter that warm season, to have hope, faith, joy… and peace.

Peace seems far off, distant, but a dream of yesteryear, an unfamiliar word, something we thought we knew but may be now we aren’t so sure…But it’s to peace (along with hope, faith, and joy) that Advent calls each of us personally. Hope fuels faith and these procure joy and these three create the space and slow time down long enough for peace. Even now? Yes. Especially now. Even you? Yes. Especially you.

Magnificat

God deposed the rulers and potentates from thrones and exalted the lowly and humble, God filled up the needy with all good things and sent the abounding away empty. God took hold of Israel, God’s child, to call to [their] mind [God’s] mercy, just as God spoke to our elders, to Abraham and to his descendants into eternity. (Lk 1:51-55)[1]

Mary’s words recorded by Luke participate in that still, small, divine voice eager to beckon those feeling exhausted, fatigued, weary, downcast, low, a lacking hope, faith, and joy. This isn’t just a message jotted down or a hymn eloquently penned (though, it might very well be these things!). It’s a prophetic utterance soliciting a harkening to God and a change in direction for all those who hear; it’s a response not only to Mary’s own situation but of Elizabeth, too. It’s in the midst of her visit to Elizabeth—who acknowledges the Savior Mary carries—that causes the space for this song to erupt from Mary’s soul, a song of a poor, oppressed one[2] for the poor, oppressed ones.[3]

Mary’s song articulates that the starting place of God’s divine activity is among the lowly and not those set up high; from the bottom up, God will make God’s self known.[4] And God will bring God’s liberation as God moves through humanity correcting the misplaced emphases on human power in terms of status, wealth, privilege, and might; Mary recognizes God as the one who liberates.[5] And this liberation is an expression of God’s justice; because God is just God will right-side up the upside down world crafted by the kingdom of humanity,[6] leaving equality and equity, peace and justice, mercy and grace in the wake of God’s liberating activity of leveling love and life.[7] This is why we have hope, this is why we have faith (trust), this is why we have joy, and most of all: this is why we have peace. Mary reminds us, that God isn’t aloof and doesn’t remain far off, but the exalted God come low to exalt the lowly.

Conclusion

In the high-middle ages Mary was known as the “‘Madonna of Rogues,’”[8] the one who identified with the lowly, the oppressed, the poor, the hungry, the not-very-significant, the stressed, the anxious, the fearful, those who are bereft of comfort, long to be seen and heard, starving for company and solidarity. She is the one who knows how low God will descend to bring love, life, and liberation into the world, by fulfilling God’s promises through the body broken of an unwed woman of color. She knows those tears you’ve cried, those heartaches you’ve felt, those losses you’ve suffered, those threats you live under.

Mary knows and Mary speaks. She speaks with knowing mercy as one who knows the pain of being human, the sweat of the struggle, the fear of the unknown, the feeling of being reduced to property and easily dismissible. Mary speaks with knowing mercy and walks with you as part of the great cloud of witnesses attesting to the faithfulness of God while promising, according to Dorothee Sölle, “‘I’ll stick by you without reservations or conditions. I’ll stick by you because you are there, because you need me.’”[9] With her song, bursting forth the from her weary and desperate body all those years ago, Mary sings to you today, this morning, because in death she is alive, alive in the one she bore who came to defeat death and destruction, isolation and alienation.[10] She sings to you today and calls to you: Do not give up weary one, God hears you, God sees you, God comes to you, God is coming to you…have hope, have faith, have joy, and have peace…

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, trans. Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010) 16. “Teresita: ‘…When she called herself a slave, Mary brought herself closer to the oppressed, I think.’”

[3] Cardenal, Solentiname, 15. “The pregnant Mary had gone to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who also was pregnant. Elizabeth congratulated her because she would be the mother of the Messiah, and Mary broke out singing that song. It is a song to the poor.”

[4] [4] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010) 26-7. “Mary sees in her own act of conceiving, and in the child who is to be born out of that act, a sign of the way in which God works. Her song is not like many of the ’praise’ songs of today, proclaiming how great God is. It is a hard-hitting proclamation of a God who overturns the common order of society.”

[5] Cardenal, Solentiname, 16. “‘[Mary] recognizes liberation…We have to do the same thing. Liberation is from sin, that is, from selfishness, from injustice, from misery, from ignorance—from everything that’s oppressive. That liberation is in our wombs too, it seems to me…’”

[6] Cardenal, Solentiname, 17. “And another: ‘She says that God is holy, and that means ‘just.’ The just person who doesn’t offend anybody, the one who doesn’t commit any injustices. God is like this and we should be like him.’”

[7] Cardenal, Solentiname, 19. “The last remark was from Marita: ‘Mary sang here about equality. A society with not social classes. Everyone a like.’”

[8] Soelle, Strength of the Weak, 45. , “[Mary] was known as the ‘madonna of rogues,’ which is to say the madonna of the impoverished rural proletariat, who could not help being at odds with the increasingly stringent laws that defined and protected property.”

[9] Soelle, The Strength of the Weak: Toward a Christian Feminist Identity, trans. Robert and Rita Kimber (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984) 45. “…Mary embodied Mercy, or what we usually call ‘charity.’…What I mean to say is that Mary rejects ‘performance’ as a measure of human value. I will not stick by you, she says, because you are handsome, clever, successful, musical, potent, or whatever. I’ll stick by you without reservations or conditions. I’ll stick by you because you are there, because you need me. Her unconditional acceptance is that of a mother who cannot exchange her child in the store if she finds it doesn’t suit her.”

[10] Soelle, Strength of the Weak, 46. “The little Madonna who spoke of liberation in the passage quoted form Luke is not made of plaster or plastic. She is very much alive, alive in the history of all who are oppressed, alive in the history of women.”

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The Far God Brought Near

audio forthcoming….

Psalm 100:2, 4 Know this: God is God; God has made us, and we’re Abba God’s; we’re God’s people and the sheep of God’s pasture. God is good; God’s mercy is everlasting; and Abba God’s faithfulness endures from age to age.

Introduction

God lives at the end of infinity; God finds God’s home in the finite. God is the first movement; God is the last movement. God is immortal; but then God is mortal. God is beyond the stars; God is the very twinkle in the eye of the one who loves you. God is so far; but also? God is so near. God is here but only because God is not here, too. It’s hard to speak succinctly about God.

Dorothee Sölle refers to God as the “far-near God.” Grand-humble; royal-common; immaterial-material; here-there; far-near. These paradoxical statements keep God just in our grasp and just outside of it. To declare that God is “far” and only “far” is to objectify God and force God into a (far) corner thus (ironically) to make God small, figured out, caged, folded up like an origami God and stuck in a wallet. And we cannot render God strictly close as God is only near, never far. In this equation God becomes (logically) too small, no different than that voice in your head, your conscience, and ceases to be God because there is no distinction between your inner person and God—the confusion here becomes dastardly when one’s own wishes and desires are mistaken for God’s (acts of violence, narcissistic manipulation, etc.).

To speak of God is to speak in paradox, holding as one two statements appearing to be antithetical while seeing they deeply relate as one existing in the other. (Death in life, life in death.) Here is where the letter of Ephesians shines, for me. The language employed by the author of Ephesians plays with the stretchiness of paradox like the way a womb can expand to comfort and nourish the entire life held within its embrace.

Ephesians 1:15-23

On account of this I also heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and the love toward all the holy ones. I do not cease being thankful concerning you mentioning [you] when making my prayers, so that the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, the progenitor of glory, maybe give you a spirit of wisdom and a revelation in knowledge of God…[1]

Eph. 1:15-16

The author of Ephesians writes this section in single sentence,[2] peppered with small-big, near-far statements about God. The author commends the Ephesian Christians for their faith and that this faith leads them to love outwardly. Their inward faith renders them turned outward and not inward, toward their neighbors; smallness located in bigness. Then the author brings together their own thankfulness for the Ephesian Christians in tight correlation to their prayers to God. This gratitude for these Christians weaves its way into Paul’s prayers eliminating the distance between the two; nearness located in farness. Then the author brings to the fore that this God who is the source of glory is also the one who gives of God’s own spirit of wisdom to those who believer, granting them a revelation in knowledge of God. Something big in something small in something big. It is God in Christ in the Spirit that participates through Paul into the Ephesian Christians in the Church. [3] The big in the small and the small in the big; the far in the near and the near in the far.

…the eyes of your heart having been enlightened in order that you behold what hope there is of God’s calling, what wealth of God’s inheritance in the holy ones, and that which is beyond the greatness of God’s strength in us, the ones who believe according to the activity of God’s might of strength.

Eph. 1:18-19

Again, the author of Ephesians continues with these big-small, far-near statements. It’s the God who acted in Christ—way back when—who calls now; God’s far voice comes near, divine soundwaves beckoning down long hallways of history taking those who hear from any era into the Christ who lived and died and rose again as if that then was and is now. In this way God still acts now not as an historical event still working itself out, but as a current event in our lives; the far-near God, the historical-current God.

Better yet, it is the historical-current-future God speaking to God’s historical-current-future church, granting wisdom and knowledge of God’s self according to the context of the believers, as they are and where they are, as they all await their inheritance by their hope. [4] And this hope that lays hold of God’s historical promise currently spoken to them while trusting God will fulfill that promise in their future, is not only a sentiment. This hope informs and forms the Ephesian Christians’ praxis in the world (evidenced in their love for their neighbor mentioned at the outset).[5]

This God worked out in Christ by raising him from the dead and making him to sit on God’s righthand in the heavens high above all rule and authority and power and domain while being named above all names, not only in eternity but also in this coming one. And, God “subjected all things under his feet,” placing him as head above all things in the church. Wherever his body is there he is the fullness of all fulfilling.

Eph. 1:20-23

And here at the end of our passage, the bigness of God resides in the smallness of those who are called; the far God is near to the ecclesia, the called ones. Here, the church is in Christ by faith and yet this Christ is the one who fills the church.[6] The great Christ, the one who is above all powers and authorities and domains and names and who sits at the righthand of God is the same one who is present in the small church and shows up where this small, fragile, vulnerable, and humble body is by faith in the power of the holy Spirit, participating in his self-witness. The small church carries the big burden that is the light yoke of faith in Christ, bringing Christ and thus God with them in their praxis in the world by faith manifesting as love toward the neighbor.

Conclusion

God is the far-near God, the big-small God, the here-there God, the infinite-finite God. The largeness of God is also God’s intimate closeness, farness that is nearness, the immaterial that ends in the material; the divine that intersects with the human.

But what does this have to do with us? Well, we are wrapped up in this great big-smallness, this far-nearness. And we are not only wrapped up in it but brought further in to God to be closer to the neighbor, bringing this far-near, big-small God closer to those who have been deprived of access to God. This is the witness of the church in the world: God for us, God for you, God for me. We, the church, are called in our faith to be as Christ in the world bringing God’s love, life, and liberation to those who are trapped under the principalities and powers of kingdom of humanity.[7]

Beloved, Christ witnessed God into the world; after Christ ascended, the divine Holy Spirit came to make the church God’s witness of God in the world in Christ’s name as Christ’s body, bringing the world and its inhabitants into the manifold grace and mercy of God. We are called and inspired to bring the big God into the smallest recesses of the earth, into the hearts of those who are crying out because of oppression and marginalization. We are filled by Christ with Christ to bring the far God near to those who suffer under alienation and isolation. Because where the body of Christ goes, there Christ goes, there the far-near, big-small God goes.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] Markus Barth, Ephesians, The Anchor Bible (Garden City: Double Day, 1974. 160. “…Eph 1:15-23 has the form of one long sentence.”

[3] Barth, Ephesians, 160. “The main agents are God, the Spirit, and the Messiah. The apostle, the saints, and the church are mentioned in tun.”

[4] Barth, Ephesians, 160. “Again, the action of God is not limited to the past. Rather the faith, prayer, and community of the saints are related to that God who is still pouring out his Spirit, increasing knowledge, proving his might over all power, filling the church and the world. The saints are still to attain to an heirdom which lies before them; their faith (and love) cannot be genuine unless it is a hope relying on God who has made a promise, gives hope, and will keep his word.”

[5] Barth, Ephesians, 163. “…’wisdom’ and ‘knowledge’ imparted by the Spirit are not limited to perception, learning, and theoretical insight, but show the wise man how to live. It is characteristic that knowledge cannot exist without growth and expansion. A knower remains a learner, and knowledge will always seek to give others a share in its contents.”

[6] Barth, Ephesians, 160. “Thus the end leads back to the beginning, a reference to the communion of saints. But while the saints were described at the beginning as being ‘in Christ,’ at the end Christ seems to be portrayed as the one who is filling them.”

[7] Barth, Ephesians, 176. “…the message of Ephesians is concerned less with the salvation of the individual soul than with the peace between man, his fellow man and God, i.e. less with private piety than with the social character s of the church and its mission to the world.”

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